The Seven Habits

William Todd Rose THE SEVEN HABITS

CHAPTER ONE

Infective people are everywhere, man. They pass you on the street, rub up against you at the bus stop and walk out of bathrooms without washin’ their hands. They sneeze, they cough, they fuckin’ breathe the same air you and I gulp down to fuel our energy starved cells. We’re just lucky it ain’t airborne, ya know?

But God forbid ya put the moves on that cute brunette with the nice ass who’s been giving ya the hungry eye all damn night. Next thing ya know, she’s got her tongue shoved down your throat and these microscopic terrorists are waging molecular jihad all up and down your circulatory system.

Sad part is that sexy little bitch doesn’t even realize she’s a carrier. None of ‘em do. They go about their business like there’s no tomorrow: workin’, partyin’, tuckin’ their precious little incubators in for the night so they can slip off into the shadows and exchange infection with some unsuspecting host. Kissin’ and fuckin’, suckin’ and swappin’ juices—it’s the perfect recipe for contagion. See, that’s the places these toxic little bastards just love to congregate. Warm, moist, and dark… may as well be walking around with a friggin’ petri dish surgically implanted in your crotch.

But me? I know things, man… and I make damn sure to keep my fluids to myself. You won’t catch ol’ Bosley Coughlin stickin’ his prick into a full-blown hot zone. Not after the shit I’ve seen.

See, I’ve become what you might call dimensionally unstable. I pass through time and space like smoke through a screen, man. Sometimes the Eye of Aeons just opens up in front of me and I see all those disembodied hands squirmin’ and writhin’, clawin’ at that smoke-like fire they’re trapped in; they grab onto the edges and start pullin’ them back, forming a dark hole in the center no bigger round than a roll of toilet paper. They just keep yankin’ and tuggin’ and that pupil just keeps gettin’ larger and larger—a dinner plate, a manhole cover, the front tire of an eighteen wheeler—eventually all those things look like tiny polka dots compared to that circular void, man. The reds and blues and oranges pulse out from it, wavering in the air like heat above the sidewalk, all flickering and pretty and hypnotic. Before long, you can’t look away from this aurora pupillae any more than you could turn your face from God.

And that’s when the wind starts suckin’ at ya. It rustles your clothes and hair and somehow blows both hot and cold all at once, beads of sweat leak out from pores even as chillbumps tingle your skin, you get this flutterin’ in your belly, like you might want to toss your cookies right then and there… but at the same time you feel ravenous, like you could eat for days and never fill the hollow pit that’s become your stomach.

Before long that breeze is like a flippin’ twister. It pushes at your back with the invisible hands and pulls at ya from the front, makin’ ya stumble and stagger as you’re pulled closer and closer to that unblinking Eye.

If you try to scream, your voice is devoured by the darkness before it’s even had a chance to rattle your vocal chords, and you can struggle to hang onto reality with all ya got… but within seconds the gravity from that pupil is so immense that your molecules seep right through your fuckin’ skin, man. Oh yeah, it hurts like Hell, you better believe it. It burns, it throbs, it aches, it feels like millions of tiny fangs ripping and shredding the nerve endings exposed after your skin’s done been peeled back layer by layer with a paring knife.

Next thing ya know, you’re fallin’ and flyin’ and all these sounds swirl around you. Cries, laughter, whispers, the lull of forgotten languages, the hiss and crackle of cosmic radiation burnin’ through the cosmos. It’s probably what God hears when He’s wrapped up in the middle of all those prayers being hurled at him. And there’s this smell dude, that is literally everywhere. It’s a scent like a new beach ball, fresh from the package, so thick you can taste that shit.

And then poof… just like that you’re freed from this prison of flesh.

See, I’ve seen planets our scientists don’t even know about, man. Lifeforms that make you teeter on the chasm of madness ‘cause you just can’t wrap your thoughts around how something like that could defy all known natural laws and still exist. Methane oceans, mountains of diamond and rust, skies that look more like thin, veiny membranes… it’s all out there, as oblivious to us as most of us are to it.

I’ve also shifted back and forth through that illusion we call Time. In the Eye of Aeons there’s no such thing as past, present, and future, dig? There’s just this endless state of Now with all these so-called linear points overlappin’ and co-existing. The closest I can come to doin’ it justice and making you idiots understand, is to compare it to those Russian matryoshka dolls. You know the ones, right? Kinda shaped like a peanut, all brightly colored with rosy cheeks and painted kerchiefs around perfectly circular faces?

You open up one and there’s another, a smaller doll, nested inside. So you open that one too and be damned if there’s not another one of those fuckers inside it. Before long you’ve got all these matryoshkas clustered around ya like a pack of rabid grannies and they just keep getting smaller and smaller and smaller. That’s what Time is, man, only size doesn’t come into play since that’s an entirely different set of dimensions. But you get the general idea, right? Maybe not. But it doesn’t really fuckin’ matter now, does it?

The point is, I know how the pyramids were built because I was there when the slaves were haulin’ those giant slabs through the blistering sun. I’ve seen the muck and mire bubbling like pools of hot tar as singlecelled organisms subdivided with the dream of someday pullin’ themselves outta that ooze. I’ve floated in the vast nothingness that was before all things. I’ve witnessed the beginning, man.

On the flip side of this metaphysical coin, I’ve also been through Omega. Not the end of everything, mind you, not yet. Just the death of this inconsequential little species that inhabits a tiny speck of dust on a display case in the mansion of the universe. A speck of dust we call Earth, man. And let me tell ya, brother… we ain’t got much time left.

Oh yeah, that’s it. Roll your eyes. Trade your snide little glances and your smug half-grins. I can hear your thoughts, you know. Once you’ve been through the Eye of Aeons, everything is possible and nothing’s prohibited. See, you’ve got this little carnival barker in your head shouting into his megaphone at the milling crowd: that’s right folks, step right up and prepare to be amazed at the depths of depravity and insanity that can haunt a once healthy mind. See the twisted synapses and shattered receptors with your own two eyes… and I can hear it all, mother fucker. So laugh if it makes you feel better, if it makes you feel safer. Yuck it up, goofster. Your opinion doesn’t mean jack to me, man, ‘cause I look around and all I see are corpses who don’t realize they’re dead yet…

But, anyway… where were we? Oh yeah, we were startin’ at the end, right? Let this blow your mind, man: tufts of grass sprout through cracked concrete and ivy clambers over rusted hulks of metal that vaguely look like cars. And all these buildings surrounding us? These gleaming monuments of steel and glass that strive like Icarus to touch the sun? Nothin’ but mounds of rubble and mountains of debris that roll across the landscape like droppings from The Thing That Eats Worlds. Smaller structures, they’ve fared a little better. Some of ‘em still defy gravity with their crumbled walls and timbers turned to cinder by a fire that raged so long ago even the smell has faded.

And it’s so fuckin’ quiet, man. More quiet than this planet has ever known. Not even the birds are singin’… because they know something’s out there. Their instincts tell them to stay still, to hide in the cracks and crevices of our fallen society, to pretend they’re nothing but shadows clustered in ruin.

You know how ya step outside now, and you get blasted with a wave of smells? There’s the clouds of exhaust belching from cars and motorcycles and buses; the scent of fried food driftin’ from restaurants and minglin’ with cigar and cigarette smoke, and that hot asphalt odor from where they’re pavin’ down at the corner of Seventh and Emereson… On top of all this, you’ve got perfumes and deodorants and hairspray and sour sweat thrown in the mix. All that? Gone, man. In its place is this stench so thick it gets lodged in the back of your sinuses like a little nugget of rancid mucus. You wanna gag but somehow the air gets trapped inside your throat; like your body knows that once it’s been expelled, you’ll just have to breathe in another lungful of that greasy rancor.

It’s how those mass graves in Cambodia smelled the time I found myself lying in the bottom of that putrid pit of Hell, only a hundred times worse. Until you’ve smelled shit like this, words simply can’t describe it, man.

Again, I know what you’re thinkin’… everyone’s dead, right? Shit, man, if only it were that simple, but it’s not.