The Virus - Shez Hough

THE VIRUS

In The Script by shezhough

I have a particular Tarot card swimming through the switched-on forefront of my mind’s eye. It emerges slowly from the hazy mists of time. I can just about make out the beautiful artwork imagery, from decks been and burned, in a former occult journeyman life.

Before shit went south.

The Tarot card I have in mind is of The Fool. Number Zero. From Hero to Zero. He is standing on the precipice of a cliff, at the start of his life journey. Footloose and fancy-free, staring into the heavens.

I wonder at the card’s meaning, as I stare into the flames of the fake coal fire sunk into the lounge wall, tuning into the early Saturday evening football scores blaring out from the telly box, as day turns into night.

I switch on my minicomputer that lives on the window shelf, charged on sunlight, moonbeams, and a two-point-one-amp power supply. I scroll through a few posts, delete a few e-mails, and plug into a few random tweets from the invisible folk in my phone.

I am searching for a little solace for the soul, a little sweetness for the lemony bitterness of life. So, I start dreaming of the perfect tweet. The one to rule them all, that would spread like a virus on the internet surf, pinging up on every phone owned by mankind, encapsulated in a superhuman spell burst of uber character formation. Then, a cautionary thought. Be careful what you wish for, sunshine.

Finger twitching – from over a decade of Big Pharma addiction and drug abuse – hovering over the phone screen, I can sense a quantum shift in my core vibrational being.

A chill to the bone marrow.

I feel the black mists of time rolling in with the night air, intoxicating and flooding my mind, heart, and soul, with an old familiar dread. I stare deeper into the fake coals – the flickering flames of Hell – as the shadow casts its darkness across the room.

I am standing on the precipice of the Fool’s life errand, I think – as, finger poised for action – I click on the tweet just pinged to my phone. I feel raging waves of paranoia coursing through my system, open it up, and read its maddening trolling message. Flinging the phone onto the battered old sofa, I breathe in the toxic black mists filling the night air.

The garden of my mind has been raised and burned to bitter seed, I figure, marching over to the in-laws for takeaway pizza and beers. My kids are both warring and confrontational, trailing in my strident wake under the starless night sky.

As I reach my destination, the Blackheart mists have rolled back, the tweet permanently erased from my mind, and the phone is disabled, back at the ranch and flat out of juice.

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