N a p a l m H e a l t h S p a : R e p o r t 2 0 1 2

KEVIN HAYES

Killing Civilization

one morning I woke up & decided I could no longer inhabit the killing civilization I had been born to know, the killing civilization that had plagued my sleep with nightmares of apocalypse. . .I abandoned all my property behind me knowing that I needed to travel light & fast or else I would be easily captured by the authorities who no doubt would pursue me as soon as they realized I was gone, authorities determined to return me to the station I had been assigned to occupy within killing civilization. . . leaving under the cover of night, when everyone was asleep, I hoped that my departure would not be discovered until daybreak & I moved with as much speed as I dared to muster in the dark believing that if I put enough distance between myself & the hunters who would follow me, perhaps I could reach & cross over the boundaries of killing civilization, boundaries that my hunters would never transgress. . .

running in the dark, I could not see where I was going, so my escape attempt was frustrated when I fell into a deep pit, a pit whose sides had been lined with smooth glass so I could not climb up out of it, a pit that no doubt had been prepared to prevent the success of any fugitive who tried to abandon the duties he had been expected to perform within the structure of killing civilization. . .my hunters, of course, found me & pulled me out of the pit locking heavy chains around my wrists & ankles as soon as I reached the surface, chains that made it easy for them to drag me back & force me to return to the place killing civilization had designed me to occupy. . .I remained in chains even after I had been brought back so that I could not make a second escape attempt & the authorities kept me under constant & close watch so that every time I was perceived as shirking in my duties I was driven to put my best effort in with deep lash of the whip into my flesh. . .

in the end I knew that nothing could redeem me but a revolution to break the power of killing civilization, but I also knew that I could not mount a successful revolution all by myself, so I began a whispering campaign among my fellow slaves at night encouraging them to join me in mass rebellion when we were permitted to sleep, but I found it difficult to communicate the message since my audience was so exhausted most of its members immediately collapsed deep into sleep as soon as each day of hard labor was done. . .still, I refused to give up the pursuit of my objective & after many years had passed, I found that my stubborn nature had proven to be an asset since the message had at last been received by all my fellow slaves so we rose up together one night to break free of our chains unnoticed by our guards who were caught napping lulled into a false sense of security because nothing like this had ever happened before. . .in one quick surge, we overwhelmed those guards who were unable to counter us with much of a defense since they had just been startled awake & we poured over the barricades separating us from the authorities pulling them down from their high thrones dismantling the structure that had transformed civilization into a killing machine celebrating our victory in ecstasy as dawn broke to illuminate the new world we had suddenly created, a sweet new world that would no longer be rocked by the constant explosions that previously had plagued it. . .