Excerpt from the Transmittal Foundation for Eternal Life pamphlet, From Static to Signal: Discovering the Almighty’s Resonance in a Time of Sin:
And we ask you IS IT COINCIDENCE that such specters have appeared THERE and nowhere else—the very viper’s nest of amorality and liberalism that is HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA, home of the GOD-HATING ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY; and south of that, where the once-vibrant border towns of MEXICO are now run by narco-traffickers who deal in MASSACRE AND HUMAN SLAVERY, who publicly DISMEMBER judges and policemen and fling their severed body parts from bridges.
Ask yourselves if it is coincidence that the specters of the dead—the lost ones, the unclaimed—have appeared in the very same place where so many have TURNED THEIR FACES AWAY FROM THE LORD GOD?
Ask yourselves, brothers and sisters, if we really have the TIME and LUXURY of believing in coincidence any longer.
And will you be ready when He comes?
And will you be diligent?
And will you hear and act when God SINGS OUT His Commandment across the airwaves and AROUND THE LIP OF THE WORLD?
• • •
The old man toppled and Vale’s fist hung there in the air; he looked like he’d surprised himself with it. Looked more than a little aghast, actually. A woman in the crowd screamed, high and dramatic, a horror movie scream, and a man near her brayed laughter. The two doormen appeared as if they’d been teleported there, just like that, and one of them pulled Vale’s arms behind him while the other jabbed him in the kidneys, just once but hard enough to make him gag.
People went to help the old man up, but he waved them away, his other hand pressed to his eye. Casper stood wide-eyed at the buffet table, a three-inch tall sandwich of crackers, cheese and cold cuts poised in front of his mouth.
The kidney-jabber drew a fist back and laid his hand flat on Vale’s chest, as if looking for the perfect spot.
“Do it,” the man holding him said. “Go.”
I stepped forward in the hopes that some half-memory of combat would serve me like it had in the Tip-Top, but Casper was there first. He grabbed the doorman’s fist and then awkwardly leapt on his back. Half of his pale and substantial ass hung out the back of his jeans as the two of them spun into the table, a pyramid of bottled waters falling and scattering on the patio. There were more screams.
Vale reared back and rammed the back of his head into the face of the doorman still holding him. “Goddamnit,” the man said almost conversationally. He let go, his hands rising to his mashed lips.
Casper reached around the man’s head and latched onto his bottom lip with his thumb and forefinger. As Marvin, I’d grown soft: this all unfolded in front of me so surreal, so slow. I shifted this way, that way. Too slow. Too old and timid. Casper pulled on the man’s lip like he was peeling the lid off a can and the man screamed and flipped Casper over his back. Casper landed on the cement around the pool, hard, and the man dropped a knee onto his chest and punched Casper once in the jaw. Looked like something from an MMA highlight reel. Casper could’ve been an appliance he’d unplugged, the kid went out so quick, a pale diamond of belly showing between his pants and his eagle t-shirt.
Vale scanned the lawn, his fists balled, chest heaving, his terrible forehead gored and bleeding again. Finally the doorman, standing behind him with his lips bloodied, just hoisted Vale up by his armpits and threw him into the pool.