Free The One Percenters by John W. Podgursky

dispersed. Good riddance.
    Graffitied on a stone wall, Madison, WI: Death is a reward, long life a punishment.
    And still the hum got louder. Slowly louder.
    Nearly buzzy, but not quite.

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Chapter Eleven
    My writing has been scattered; for this I apologize.
    The medication is making it hard to concentrate.
    Hyperbole comes easily to me when I’m stoned. I am feeling better today; that should help.
    I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror this morning. The white shirt I wore contrasted sharply with the circles under my eyes and my black, scraggly beard. I don’t look a bit like the child of long ago who jumped and skipped and frolicked. That seems like a lifetime ago, when I thought adulthood would bring total understanding and omnipotence. A lifetime ago, at least. That was before the advertising companies ate away at my brain. The same business that made me a relative fortune has sucked away my soul, leaving me as another empty shell ready to be refilled by Madison Avenue’s minions. Like you, I am tortured in the shower by inane jingles. Like you, I pay other people to front their products on my threads. I figure it was worth the trade-off; advertising bought me a really good shower with lots of hot, high, and high-pressure jets.
    I realize I told you that the man on the bus—
    the one with the cancer cure theory—liked to run his mouth. In truth, I’ve been running my own as well. It seems best to let the story tell itself, so my soapbox is now officially pushed firmly and forever back beneath my bed. It joins the dust bunnies in the darkness.
    Again, I apologize.
    Soon after I returned from my little trip up north, I decided I needed a vacation. At this point, Cristen and I were becoming serious, and I felt it was time we got away to face life from a new perspective and begin to create some new and fresh memories for ourselves. Every new relationship should be granted its own slate. Too much baggage is being carried around, if you ask me, or even if you don’t.
    We decided to go to the lake, to rough it for a weekend of sun and fun or vice versa.

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    We took her truck. It had four-wheel drive and was sufficiently beaten upon for a trip into the deep wood. We decided not to look for a commercial campsite, opting instead to take the more mellow and private option of hiking off the highway until we found a site we liked. Opson Lake is rather large, and though it draws quite a crowd in the summer months, there is enough circumference land so that folks may be assured solitude should they search for it.
    I packed a grill—the same one we used for the concert—on loan from Pat. There were fishing poles, two sleeping bags since we didn’t own a double, a three-man tent, a large cooler of food, a smaller cooler of beer, and a couple of bright orange rafts—all the makings of a hell of a weekend. I brought a knife with me whenever I camped. Normal people use them to fillet fish and prepare food, but really I’m terrified of bears. Admittedly, what good a four-inch knife would do against a grizzly, I don’t know.
    It didn’t start off as we had hoped. There was a torrential downpour that evening, and what’s worse, I had numb-headedly left the tent stakes in my closet.
    Not that it mattered in the end, as the rain meant there would be two bodies available to hold down the fort, literally.
    We sat by flashlight that night. It lacks the romantic essence of candlelight, but it’s a lot safer in a tent. The thunder outside was crisp and harsh, and loud enough to shake the land around us. It was the type of gripping storm that raises your adrenaline and brings your innermost fears to the surface. It reminds you that, yes, you are still afraid of the dark and all the things that go bump in the night. When the wind howls or the silence cuts like a knife, we are forced from our protective shells into a chilling world where we don’t know the rules and our irrational emotions rule the roost. Thunder is the