southcarolina
But, really, im not southcarolina
I was dreaming. And like always as soon as that fact became clear, i was awake. Haunting images of apocalyptic destruction danced in my skull, rapidly becoming less and less concrete, more and more vague. For the first time that i could remember, consecutive moments of lucidity started to string together. I began to recognize things....the dirty walls, the lumpy softness of the mattress beneath me. Hazy sunlight leaked through cracks and missing slats of the plastic miniblinds on the window beside me. A subtle aroma of sweat and exertion wafted to my nose. The color blue. Everything....blue. Words written everywhere. Spools of thread, hundreds of them, piled in the corner. I lifted my head to look around, and saw stars. Blinding pain hammered through my skull. I lay still for a moment, and when the throbbing did not subside i grit my teeth and tried to sit up.
The pain was excruciating, and bile began to rise in my throat. I barely fought it down, and found myself sitting on the edge of the rickety old bed, staring into a mirror on the wall across from me. I looked like the proverbial death warmed over. Hair uncombed, what looked like several months worth of beard on my chin, clothes stained with blood, sweat and God knows what else. The taste of....something... in my mouth. A bunch of gause hastily taped to the inside of my left forearm. The man in the mirror was me, but he was a stranger. My head still pounded, but my thoughts were beginning to clear. Although i recognized a few things, i didnt have any idea where i was. Or who i was. I felt like i had been asleep forever. My muscles seemed oddly weak, and i didnt seem to have full control of them.
Snippets of non-sensical memories raced through my head. Men dressed in red and white and blue running into each other. Clowns, indians and road paving equipment, lawyers, squirrels and insomniacs, all talking about the human pinballs. More people talking about these people. People talking about the people talking about the people. Something about videotape. Shiny metal....were those trophies? Frustration welled up in me. I should understand this. I had obviously been somewhere. I had obviously done something. But for all of this, it was like i had been stranded on some other planet. A barren, almost lifeless planet. To say the years of isolation had made swiss cheese of my memory implied there was enough left around the holes to be considered cheese.
I tried to stand, and it was a monumental effort. My legs ached from that one simple motion. My heart was beating faster, and my breathing was already heavier. My head swam and vision blurred at the sudden movement. There was little in the small room...a bed, a sink, and one door. And a small table, in the corner, with a manilla envelope on it. Not knowing what else to do, i tried to walk to the table. I immediately fell. As the floor rose up violently and forced the wind from my lungs, my arm flailed out and knocked the table over. As i lay on the ground gasping for breath, sheets of papers floated down to the floor all around me. One was a picture of me, from before, clean shaven and young. Another was a sheet filled with text, although the language was foreign to me. A third had only a symbol on it. A symbol of red and blue and white in the shape of a shield, with three smaller symbols at the bottom. The letters looked familiar, but my brain was still muddled from my long sleep, and my short fall. Then in a flash...
N. F. L.
I remembered.
I remembered everything. Who i was. Where i was. Why i was there.
I remembered WHAT i was. Or more accurately, what i used to be.
I remembered the dreams.
My name was southcarolina, and i was in a self imposed prison, and ironically, was there to escape.
My name was southcarolina, and i was, or i was at one time, an oracle. I had been the portender of things to come. I was the bringer of prophesy, the defender of fate, and the messenger of karma. I had been the one true voice of destiny in this world. And i had wished it all away.
And my cruel mistress had heard my wishes, listened to them, and acquiesced. And much to my dismay, i found myself alone, with no more voices in my head. No more dreams.
Until today.
The papers in the folder opened a floodgate of memories. I knew all about me. I knew all about my life. I knew all about my future.
It was time for me to return. It was almost too late. Almost. But i had to hurry.
The reality was that Tom was playing with injuries that would make Evel Knievel cringe.
The reality was that Randy had been recruited to JD Drew's Apathy Whenever campaign.
The reality was that Laurence was a football fumbling cyborg from the future.
The reality was that Adalius really was a deadly strain of Clubhouse Influenza.
The reality was that was that Brandon was jumpier than a coked up kangaroo on a trampoline.
The reality was that no one, not one single solitary entity on the roster had even an inkling of how to rush the passer.
Reality blew, and blew hard. I was instantly wishing i could go back to not remembering. But as horrible as reality was, my dreams were worse. Much much worse....
This was my dream, to the best of my recollection:
I am in a foxhole. There are men in navy blue on both sides of me, up and down this trench as far as the eye can see. There is a cacophony of sound. Gunshots. Screaming. More gunshots. Someone shouting out orders. Someone else howling in agony. Gunshots. Gunshots. Gunshots. Something whistles by my ear. I duck for cover. The men around me periodically rise up and fire off a rounds from their century old muzzle loaders. I realize that i am holding one too. A man to my right, a man with the face of an Angel, and the skills of a God, looks to me for orders. The name on his uniform is Thomas. He is wounded, a gimpy knee, and a much older injury to his right shoulder. He refers to me as Coach. The shock that i am leading these men hits home like a bomb. I slowly rise up to survey the situation. To our right we are hemmed in by the ocean. Hundreds of triangle fins crisscross the water there. We wont be escaping that way. There is an airfield, and pilots are scrambling to their planes. If they get airborn, we are done for. Across from us, a few dozen yards away, is another trench, filled with me trying to kill us. Like it or not, this is our most likely chance of survival. But while i am surrounded by a group of similarly clad men, our opponents are the strangest menagerie of people imaginable.
Bill Clinton is in that trench, cigar stub in his mouth, automatic rifle blazing away. Bill Gates is there too, with a radio on. Bill Nye, the science guy, and Bill Cosby too. A tall redhead is writhing in agony in their manmade canyon, belowing in agony about his ankles. Its Bill Walton. I look up and down their line and see Bill Murray, Bill Bixby, Bill O'Reily, Bill Hicks, and Bill Mahar. Over to one side i see what looks like a special unit made up of Billy Ocean, Billy Joel, Billy Idol and Billy Ray Cyrus.
My God, i realize, we are at war with the Bills. And we are losing. We are being over run. There is only one thing to do, only one solution. I yell for my radio operator. A smallish boy next door named Wes crawls over to me and fires up the device. Within minutes, a dark blotch appears on the horizon. It takes only seconds for this blotch to become so big it dominates the sky. As it passes over us, it is revealed to be the biggest flock of falcons i have ever seen. Literally thousands of the dark birds of prey fly over our position, shrieking so loudy, it hurts our ears. The birds then descend on the nearby airfield, and beyond reason, begin to dismantle the planes as they just begin to roll toward the runways. Within moments, the battle is over, and every aircraft within sight is ruined. The birds then take flight once again, and fly off into the sunset. But this barely registers on me. I am already on the phone again, making yet another alliance. And again, within moments out new allies arrive. A hundred of the biggest scuba divers i have ever seen begin to wade into the water, and soon the ocean water is bloody...
The dream shifts.....
It is cold. We might be in Antarctica. The wind howls loudly. There is a large structure. This isnt Antarctica. Its worse. Its Ralph Wilson Stadium. The crowd is cheering wildly. I am suddenly on the playing field, but there is no game going on. It looks like...surgery. I move closer. There is an operating room set up on the fifty yard line. Doctors and nurses are working frantically. I try to get a glimpse of the patient. From what i can see the patient isnt even a person. It looks more like a crash test dummy, with the words Patriot Division Title painted on it. Now i recognize that Bill Belichick is the surgeon. The nurses are Wes Welker, Jerod Mayo, and Kevin Faulk. The anesthesiologist appears to be Randy Moss. I move even closer, and i am blocked by a large man in scrubs. I give him the slightest head fake to the inside, then go around his left side without any trouble at all. Matt Light. Out of nowhere a man runs through the scene, screaming and burning like a candle in a gasoline refinery. No one seems concerned, in fact they seem amused. A player leans over and whispers, "Dont worry. Thats just Wilhite. He does the same trick every week. You get used to it after a while" I wonder how a patient could be expected to survive surgery in conditions like this. They should have at least brought him inside the locker room. Suddenly the NFL Competition Committee is standing next to me. Marvin Lewis. Ozzie Newsome. Bill Polian. All of them are there, but these three stand out. They are who they are, but they also resemble the big headed aliens that capture Captain Pike in the pilot for the Original Star Trek series.
And just like those aliens, i can hear their thoughts. They are thinking how ironic, after all these years of Patriot teams using the weather and the quagmire in Foxborough to influence the outcome of games, that the poor weather in Buffahell might just slay that Patriot beast once and for all. And even though, they showed no outward emotion, they all laughed on the inside. (You could tell because thier little head veins throbbed in a mirthful manner). I know they dont know any better, as evil often doesnt know itself to be evil.....
The dream shifts....
This is where it gets weird.
I am Thundarr the Barbarian. Along with my companions, Ookla the Mok and Princess Ariel, i pit my strength, my courage and my fabulous Sun Sword against the forces of evil.
I am on a precipice. The sheer drop is staggering. The bottom is beyond the range of my eyes. The wind gusts randomly, throwing me off balance first one direction, then another. Mutant rat people surround us. We are on the very edge, with no place to go. Their leader steps forward, and introduces himself as Eric the Rat. He tells us a story about how he was once just a lowly rat toiling in obscurity starving for scraps of cheese and bread tossed down to him by his master, until an evil wizard had made him into the mutated creature before us. He had stabbed that wizard in the back at his earliest opportunity. He had to, he claimed. How else was he going to make a name for himself? And now, regrettably, he must destroy the three of us also. He offers us a quick death if i surrender the Sun Sword....
I decline. The Mutants press closer. We begin to fight for our very lives...
You probably dont want to hear about the rest of the dream....something about a dozen college sorority pledges, a gallon of tequlia, a crate of eggplants, a huge tub of industrial machine lubricant, and the Golden Gate Bridge. I dont think this part has anything to do with football, but i guess you never know. Maybe the eggplants represent Matt Millen?
But the rest of this is very ominous. Karma has lined us up and set forth a cosmic obstacle course. Complete it, and the Promised Land awaits. Falter, even once, even slightly, and ruin will be rained down upon us like frogs from an Angry Clown Diety. I am southcarolina, and i have returned as Karma's messenger. If you want to survive, you must follow me. Otherwise, the future i see is no future at all, a future that can only be described as Offseason. This is no future for us, or our families, or our children. A future with January weekends filled with yardwork and attic cleaning, while our neighbors are left to cheer and celebrate. Do not let this happen. Do not. This is a path to oblivion. This is a path we cannot take. This is a path we must avoid at all costs. or else suffer consequences our fragile human minds cannot even begin to comprehend.
Anyway,
My name is southcarolina, and i am back.
blowup
The pain was excruciating, and bile began to rise in my throat. I barely fought it down, and found myself sitting on the edge of the rickety old bed, staring into a mirror on the wall across from me. I looked like the proverbial death warmed over. Hair uncombed, what looked like several months worth of beard on my chin, clothes stained with blood, sweat and God knows what else. The taste of....something... in my mouth. A bunch of gause hastily taped to the inside of my left forearm. The man in the mirror was me, but he was a stranger. My head still pounded, but my thoughts were beginning to clear. Although i recognized a few things, i didnt have any idea where i was. Or who i was. I felt like i had been asleep forever. My muscles seemed oddly weak, and i didnt seem to have full control of them.
Snippets of non-sensical memories raced through my head. Men dressed in red and white and blue running into each other. Clowns, indians and road paving equipment, lawyers, squirrels and insomniacs, all talking about the human pinballs. More people talking about these people. People talking about the people talking about the people. Something about videotape. Shiny metal....were those trophies? Frustration welled up in me. I should understand this. I had obviously been somewhere. I had obviously done something. But for all of this, it was like i had been stranded on some other planet. A barren, almost lifeless planet. To say the years of isolation had made swiss cheese of my memory implied there was enough left around the holes to be considered cheese.
I tried to stand, and it was a monumental effort. My legs ached from that one simple motion. My heart was beating faster, and my breathing was already heavier. My head swam and vision blurred at the sudden movement. There was little in the small room...a bed, a sink, and one door. And a small table, in the corner, with a manilla envelope on it. Not knowing what else to do, i tried to walk to the table. I immediately fell. As the floor rose up violently and forced the wind from my lungs, my arm flailed out and knocked the table over. As i lay on the ground gasping for breath, sheets of papers floated down to the floor all around me. One was a picture of me, from before, clean shaven and young. Another was a sheet filled with text, although the language was foreign to me. A third had only a symbol on it. A symbol of red and blue and white in the shape of a shield, with three smaller symbols at the bottom. The letters looked familiar, but my brain was still muddled from my long sleep, and my short fall. Then in a flash...
N. F. L.
I remembered.
I remembered everything. Who i was. Where i was. Why i was there.
I remembered WHAT i was. Or more accurately, what i used to be.
I remembered the dreams.
My name was southcarolina, and i was in a self imposed prison, and ironically, was there to escape.
My name was southcarolina, and i was, or i was at one time, an oracle. I had been the portender of things to come. I was the bringer of prophesy, the defender of fate, and the messenger of karma. I had been the one true voice of destiny in this world. And i had wished it all away.
And my cruel mistress had heard my wishes, listened to them, and acquiesced. And much to my dismay, i found myself alone, with no more voices in my head. No more dreams.
Until today.
The papers in the folder opened a floodgate of memories. I knew all about me. I knew all about my life. I knew all about my future.
It was time for me to return. It was almost too late. Almost. But i had to hurry.
The reality was that Tom was playing with injuries that would make Evel Knievel cringe.
The reality was that Randy had been recruited to JD Drew's Apathy Whenever campaign.
The reality was that Laurence was a football fumbling cyborg from the future.
The reality was that Adalius really was a deadly strain of Clubhouse Influenza.
The reality was that was that Brandon was jumpier than a coked up kangaroo on a trampoline.
The reality was that no one, not one single solitary entity on the roster had even an inkling of how to rush the passer.
Reality blew, and blew hard. I was instantly wishing i could go back to not remembering. But as horrible as reality was, my dreams were worse. Much much worse....
This was my dream, to the best of my recollection:
I am in a foxhole. There are men in navy blue on both sides of me, up and down this trench as far as the eye can see. There is a cacophony of sound. Gunshots. Screaming. More gunshots. Someone shouting out orders. Someone else howling in agony. Gunshots. Gunshots. Gunshots. Something whistles by my ear. I duck for cover. The men around me periodically rise up and fire off a rounds from their century old muzzle loaders. I realize that i am holding one too. A man to my right, a man with the face of an Angel, and the skills of a God, looks to me for orders. The name on his uniform is Thomas. He is wounded, a gimpy knee, and a much older injury to his right shoulder. He refers to me as Coach. The shock that i am leading these men hits home like a bomb. I slowly rise up to survey the situation. To our right we are hemmed in by the ocean. Hundreds of triangle fins crisscross the water there. We wont be escaping that way. There is an airfield, and pilots are scrambling to their planes. If they get airborn, we are done for. Across from us, a few dozen yards away, is another trench, filled with me trying to kill us. Like it or not, this is our most likely chance of survival. But while i am surrounded by a group of similarly clad men, our opponents are the strangest menagerie of people imaginable.
Bill Clinton is in that trench, cigar stub in his mouth, automatic rifle blazing away. Bill Gates is there too, with a radio on. Bill Nye, the science guy, and Bill Cosby too. A tall redhead is writhing in agony in their manmade canyon, belowing in agony about his ankles. Its Bill Walton. I look up and down their line and see Bill Murray, Bill Bixby, Bill O'Reily, Bill Hicks, and Bill Mahar. Over to one side i see what looks like a special unit made up of Billy Ocean, Billy Joel, Billy Idol and Billy Ray Cyrus.
My God, i realize, we are at war with the Bills. And we are losing. We are being over run. There is only one thing to do, only one solution. I yell for my radio operator. A smallish boy next door named Wes crawls over to me and fires up the device. Within minutes, a dark blotch appears on the horizon. It takes only seconds for this blotch to become so big it dominates the sky. As it passes over us, it is revealed to be the biggest flock of falcons i have ever seen. Literally thousands of the dark birds of prey fly over our position, shrieking so loudy, it hurts our ears. The birds then descend on the nearby airfield, and beyond reason, begin to dismantle the planes as they just begin to roll toward the runways. Within moments, the battle is over, and every aircraft within sight is ruined. The birds then take flight once again, and fly off into the sunset. But this barely registers on me. I am already on the phone again, making yet another alliance. And again, within moments out new allies arrive. A hundred of the biggest scuba divers i have ever seen begin to wade into the water, and soon the ocean water is bloody...
The dream shifts.....
It is cold. We might be in Antarctica. The wind howls loudly. There is a large structure. This isnt Antarctica. Its worse. Its Ralph Wilson Stadium. The crowd is cheering wildly. I am suddenly on the playing field, but there is no game going on. It looks like...surgery. I move closer. There is an operating room set up on the fifty yard line. Doctors and nurses are working frantically. I try to get a glimpse of the patient. From what i can see the patient isnt even a person. It looks more like a crash test dummy, with the words Patriot Division Title painted on it. Now i recognize that Bill Belichick is the surgeon. The nurses are Wes Welker, Jerod Mayo, and Kevin Faulk. The anesthesiologist appears to be Randy Moss. I move even closer, and i am blocked by a large man in scrubs. I give him the slightest head fake to the inside, then go around his left side without any trouble at all. Matt Light. Out of nowhere a man runs through the scene, screaming and burning like a candle in a gasoline refinery. No one seems concerned, in fact they seem amused. A player leans over and whispers, "Dont worry. Thats just Wilhite. He does the same trick every week. You get used to it after a while" I wonder how a patient could be expected to survive surgery in conditions like this. They should have at least brought him inside the locker room. Suddenly the NFL Competition Committee is standing next to me. Marvin Lewis. Ozzie Newsome. Bill Polian. All of them are there, but these three stand out. They are who they are, but they also resemble the big headed aliens that capture Captain Pike in the pilot for the Original Star Trek series.
And just like those aliens, i can hear their thoughts. They are thinking how ironic, after all these years of Patriot teams using the weather and the quagmire in Foxborough to influence the outcome of games, that the poor weather in Buffahell might just slay that Patriot beast once and for all. And even though, they showed no outward emotion, they all laughed on the inside. (You could tell because thier little head veins throbbed in a mirthful manner). I know they dont know any better, as evil often doesnt know itself to be evil.....
The dream shifts....
This is where it gets weird.
I am Thundarr the Barbarian. Along with my companions, Ookla the Mok and Princess Ariel, i pit my strength, my courage and my fabulous Sun Sword against the forces of evil.
I am on a precipice. The sheer drop is staggering. The bottom is beyond the range of my eyes. The wind gusts randomly, throwing me off balance first one direction, then another. Mutant rat people surround us. We are on the very edge, with no place to go. Their leader steps forward, and introduces himself as Eric the Rat. He tells us a story about how he was once just a lowly rat toiling in obscurity starving for scraps of cheese and bread tossed down to him by his master, until an evil wizard had made him into the mutated creature before us. He had stabbed that wizard in the back at his earliest opportunity. He had to, he claimed. How else was he going to make a name for himself? And now, regrettably, he must destroy the three of us also. He offers us a quick death if i surrender the Sun Sword....
I decline. The Mutants press closer. We begin to fight for our very lives...
You probably dont want to hear about the rest of the dream....something about a dozen college sorority pledges, a gallon of tequlia, a crate of eggplants, a huge tub of industrial machine lubricant, and the Golden Gate Bridge. I dont think this part has anything to do with football, but i guess you never know. Maybe the eggplants represent Matt Millen?
But the rest of this is very ominous. Karma has lined us up and set forth a cosmic obstacle course. Complete it, and the Promised Land awaits. Falter, even once, even slightly, and ruin will be rained down upon us like frogs from an Angry Clown Diety. I am southcarolina, and i have returned as Karma's messenger. If you want to survive, you must follow me. Otherwise, the future i see is no future at all, a future that can only be described as Offseason. This is no future for us, or our families, or our children. A future with January weekends filled with yardwork and attic cleaning, while our neighbors are left to cheer and celebrate. Do not let this happen. Do not. This is a path to oblivion. This is a path we cannot take. This is a path we must avoid at all costs. or else suffer consequences our fragile human minds cannot even begin to comprehend.
Anyway,
My name is southcarolina, and i am back.
blowup
:shrug:
