Most folks who know me know that I was born and raised and ran away
from a family of radical Evangelicals. At every opportunity I have
tried to warn people that this group of people are dangerous, vile, and
terrorists. The ONE and ONLY thing they preach from their pulpits is
hatred. I have heard them in their secret meetings when I was a child,
even way back when, fantasize about the days they could freely kill
people of color, of different religions and the homosexuals. They
claimed it as a God-given right because they were “His Chosen”. For
years I have seen their power grow, and in spite of a Constitution
guaranteeing a separation of church and state they stuck their nasty
fingers into politics and found their power with no checks. We now see
the end result of that as the bigots and racists and homophobes now feel
free to spew their hatred everywhere; and terrorize, bully and EVEN
KILL anyone and everyone that does not subscribe to their brand of
insanity. In all my years after escaping this I have been on a singular
mission to tell it, shout it, and write about what they really are and
what their agenda really is from my first hand experience of being
raised in the midst of it.
A year and a half ago I decided to finally write the scifi novel I
plotted out OVER 8 years ago about a despicable religious-political
entity coming to power in our country… One that if you are listening to
the news now…is happening… The villain in this book is that religious
creature, an Evangelical pastor…and I made dead certain I included the
exact type of rhetoric I once heard coming out of his mouth… Now is the
time to be afraid… The MONSTERS are here…they are out to destroy
everything with their hatred…and we need to recognize their speech…and
ACT!!!
EXCERPT: From XPERIMENT BY DAN SKINNER
available at Amazon. com
Chris’ head cocked. “Someone’s coming.”
Before they heard the engine, the crowd had begun to cheer. Whomever
they’d been awaiting was arriving. The group parted making way as a
convertible military jeep drove to the center and parked. Applause
echoed as a tall figure dressed in a dark suit stood in the back holding
his arms high. He was a gaunt man with an emaciated face. Long dark
hair had been pulled back in a ponytail that curled past his collar.
When he smiled his teeth looked abnormally white and too big for his
mouth like dentures. He had fierce, penetrating ebony eyes. The crowd
chanted, “Reverend, Reverend!”
“Brethren, patriots, disciples…” he began, after a theatrical bow. More applause rolled through the crowd. “Welcome!”
It was the man with the oddly familiar southern drawl that had
arrived by limousine at the repair shop. The man with the voice that
haunted Geoff. Though thin and white as ash he had the empirical stance
of a one certain of his position. His eyes possessed that feverish
glassy stare of the single-minded zealot seeing a golden road where
others saw gravel. His posture was rigid, his chin elevated as he spoke.
“There’s our guy,” DiMarco announced, moving in between them to peer over the crate.
“Do you know who he is?”
“No. But if we were Bond this would be our Blofeld.” He began typing more texts on the phone.
The applause died away as he began to speak. “I am so proud to be
with you on this propitious occasion. A little over ten years ago I
began this crusade of change as a proud American and a man of Faith. I
had a vision to right the wrongs happening to our once great country…
soon to be great again. Our founding fathers were great men who had a
vision for this country. A vision built on faith. The Almighty spoke
through them, and wrote through them when they penned our Constitution.
But the faithless have been changing it. Destroying what was once our
great nation by saying it’s a melting pot. You know what a melting pot
is? It’s where the pure becomes polluted. We weren’t meant to be a
melting pot back then, now nor ever.”
Another oceanic roar of approval rolled through the crowd. He waved them down. “I coined that phrase ten years ago:
It’s time to take our country back.
Only a patriot knows the true meaning behind those powerful words. Our
country was founded by pure-of-heart, god-fearing men like us, our
Founding Fathers – George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and
the rest. Slaves did not write our Constitution. Muslims did not write
our Constitution. Queers did not write our Constitution. The Natives who
were here did not make this country great. We brought
them civilization.
We
made this country what it is and they’ve systematically torn it down
around us. We build skyscrapers, they turn ‘em into ghettos. We raise
religious gentlefolk, they give us diseased whores, hustlers, pimps and
queers. We build nice homes to raise decent families and they brought
drugs to the streets. We praise the Creator, and their scientists say
we’re the product of ooze. We preach the sanctity of marriage between
one man and one woman and they’ll have the world believe that
we’re
unnatural because we will not approve their perversion. They have
defiled everything that was once good; that made our country with no
rival.”
DiMarco shook his head, veins in his temples rose like engorged streams. He was not enjoying the speech.
“I’ll tell you who did not build this country, did not make it great:
the Muslims, the Chinese, the Mexicans, the Africans, the atheists or
the homosexuals. The blind, the poor; the disabled did not build this
country. Women did not build this country. What does it mean when we say
we’ll take our country back? It means we’ll take it back from those who
do not belong here. We worked for our riches and they want to take them
away and give it to the parasites: the poor, the homeless, the jobless,
the immigrants. You know why we have taxes? To pay for the slackers in
the homeless shelters, the indigent who sneak over our borders to feed
on our wealth. Shelters are nothing more than homes for life-sucking
leeches. We feed them with our blood and they want more. We’re being
robbed by the very country we built. These are the people from whom we
will take our country back.”
Geoff saw Chris flinch, his jaw flex. Touching his shoulder, he was
rigid. He knew he was thinking of his friends who were now gone.
Listening, he couldn’t shake the feeling he’d encountered him before.
He just couldn’t recall where. His effete gentlemanly mannerisms made
him distinctive; not someone you’d be likely to forget.
“My father didn’t grow up in luxury in little Hawk Point Junction,
Texas just eight miles of the Oklahoma border. He started as a near
penniless newspaper owner. But he was a smart man and a hard worker and
by the time I was born he was the co-owner of a multi-million dollar oil
engineering firm.” He strode back and forth in the rear of his jeep
platform as he spoke. “I remember when I was a tyke him telling me he
wanted me to grow up knowing the true feeling of accomplishment. I
wasn’t handed anything on a silver platter. He made me work. I was a
paperboy. I washed dishes in restaurants. I mowed lawns for two dollars
in the long, hot Texas summers. And when I was old enough I joined his
company, not as a family member, but as an employee putting in sixteen
hours a day. He made me earn my way into the offices. By the time he
died, he’d lived to see me turn the business into a multi-billion dollar
Goliath in over sixty countries.”
Their gruff, Italian colleague was still busy with his phone when he
made a fist pump. “Got him,” he said, excitedly. “Braggart gave me just
enough background history to figure out who he is. His name is Emerson
Lakefield, the heir to the Lakefield oil fortune. One of twin brothers,
Everette Lakefield, who went mysteriously missing in 1972 when they were
seventeen. “
“Mysteriously?” It was Chris. “What does that mean?”
“It says by the time the boys were in their teens Emerson had become
obsessed with religion. His brother was getting ready to go into college
and favored scientific thinking. They both fought for their fathers
favor, but Everette’s interest in theater, writing and science didn’t go
down well with the old man. He thought it made him effeminate. By 1968
he only referred to having one son, Emerson. To toughen them up he sent
them on a camping expedition in the wilds of Washington for a month
giving them nothing but the clothes on their back. Two boys went on a
camping trip together in the Washington woods. Two went in, one came
out. They never found Everette. Emerson said the last he’d seen of his
brother was when he walked into the woods to take a piss. It was listed
as an open but unsolved case. Their father never mentioned Everette
again and they never held a wake or funeral for him after he was
declared dead. There never was any suspicion that it was anything but an
unfortunate accident. I guess money can buy anything.”
“It’s odd he doesn’t even mention his brother growing up,” Chris observed. “He only talks about when
he grew up.”
Lakefield was still speaking. “I learned two things when I took over
my Pop’s business: The backbone of this country was built on industry
and our faith in the Almighty. One cannot have prosperity without Faith,
and that has been my message. I’ve put my money where my mouth is. I’ve
backed good men in politics, helped build churches that have this
country’s heart at its center. But there are those with equal resources
and power that’ve fought me. They’ve tried to stop my businesses by
saying I’m destroying the planet even though my companies gave thousands
of people jobs. They’d have you believe my companies harm the
ecological balance of the planet without telling you I’m also the man
who puts the food on your plates. At every turn I’ve encountered
resistance by these socialistic bleeding hearts, and do you know why?”
he pointed at the crowd. “Godlessness. They use the myth of Science as a
club to try to beat me down. I ask you, how can the small hands of man
ruin the large work of a Creator? We cannot. Man doesn’t have the
capacity to change creation, only the Creator does.”
There was a resounding chorus of “Amen’s” from the crowd. A strange
combination, Geoff thought: men dressed in military uniforms behaving as
if they were at a revival.
“All around us we’ve seen the godless handiwork tearing at the fabric
of society. I knew I had to do something. And it came to me ten years
ago when I took on the mantel as one of His ministers that I had the
money to do it. That I had the power to make the change. That I had a
voice and I would let the Almighty use it. Now my tongue is
His tongue. He speaks through me to command the armies of earth to do His Will. And His Will is for us to take back this country.”
The dismal sewer walls resounded with more cheering and applause.
“God speaks through him? His tongue is God’s tongue?” Chris made a distasteful face. “That’s pretty…”
“Sociopathic,” DiMarco supplied the appropriate term.
The sinister man shook his fists, yelling the words like a drumbeat
to stir the fervor of the crowd. “My Will is His Will! His Will is
mine!”
The affirmations rose louder. Emerson’s eyes shown bright, his grin augmented with the adulation.
“In these ten years it’s become clear that their laws weren’t in
harmony with the Almighty’s. That it was their intention to force their
world of sin upon us. They thought we were too meek, would turn the
other cheek, but that’s not the manner in which our Lord works. If
they’re lawless, he drowns them with a flood; if they’re perverse he’s
rains fire down upon them. If they didn’t harken to his commands, he
gave them plagues.” The arc of too white teeth hardened into something
malevolent. “The Almighty has never been a passive leader. He’s always
been a decisive commander, and He’d expect nothing less of us… nothing
less of me. Together, we’re now the arm of the Almighty. They’ll fear
us.” He shook his finger. “But it will not be easy, and we must be
strong because they’ve summoned the demons of Hell to help them. I
witnessed this with my very eyes: Lucifer’s dark angel swooping down
with death upon those whose allegiance was with us. I saw the winged
demon tear them apart limb by limb. I barely escaped myself except by
His grace.” His eyes blazed.” That was when I knew that ours will be a
mighty fight; we must steel ourselves against what may come against us.”
Booming noises drummed above the tunnels. Lakefield made a grandiose
sweeping gesture upward. “Like my Pop used to say, the world can change
in three blinks of a gnat’s eye…”
Those words thunderstruck Geoff. They echoed back to him from another
night in the middle of summer in Forest Park. He peered over the crate
at the wiry figure with the ponytail he’d first seen in silhouette by
the lake where gay men cruised.
“Our real life MONSTERS are sometimes
ORANGE and spew hatred like they think it will buy them a new Mercedes…
Mr. Skinner’s MONSTERS eat them for breakfast…”
“The MOST TIMELY POLITICAL CAUTIONARY DYSTOPIAN TALE you can read!”
” this IDEA is pure GENIUS!!!!”
