You died a martyr for MDAADT

Mother's Don't Always Ask, Do They. You had wondered for some time the origins of this stupid name, and why it would ever be worth dying for.

As a teenager, thirteen or so, Aric Madden was busted rubbing one out by his mum. She hadn't knocked, breaking a rule that had long been made customary by his request. It just wasn't fair to bust in on a guy like that. He'd told a close friend after the incident, that the humiliation had liberated him, or some bullshit like that. More likely Aric was hot for his mum visualizing that moderately thick, uncircumcised cock of his; to witness that sexual energy pouring out in this act of ferocious stimulation. And he wouldn't have said no if she'd asked.

This was his motivation. If half the men in the world were this crazy for fucking their own mothers, then who knows the heightened potential available to us as a race? Aric said this to you on more than one occasion, and maybe you were just a sucker for brainwashing like everyone else, but you really did admire the guy didn't you? His devotion? Your big hero with his messianic complex and his reputation: Honest To God Motherfucker.

* * *

Your body ended up in the street; blood running from the ear facing down. It was dark, but had it not been you wouldn't have known. The cold of coming death was also the cold of London in November. The road hid you well for a bit there, until your own icy breath set you off coughing, and the man who would kill you stood there beside you before coming back to crush you under the wheels of his Bentley.

Mother's don't always ask, do they. Aric busted out of the asylum to attend your funeral, telling them how he'd known you well, what an honour to work together and so forth. He was dressed in a suit that looked more like a robe and he was mixing cocktails in the lobby with a decanted vase. His attempts to hit on your sister by tearing her blouse then telling her she dresses like a cunt. Your brother-in-law breaking him through a table. They always figured they knew the deal with you, but just by association certainly this guy dragged your dead name down a few more notches.

* * *

By age fifteen Aric had left home, frustrated with the continuing rejection by his mother to his advances, and after getting a broken rib from his father shortly after he had discovered the hole in their wardrobe door he had been using to drop in on their love making sessions.

He took a job as a concierge and when possible, slept in unletted rooms. He took to paying for sex, because older women were hard to hang on to, unless they were too old--and heaven forbid anyone over thirty-nine these days isn't a grandmother. The mother of the daughter of the daughter was specifically never to his fancy.

He would seduce young mothers in the lobby all day long to no avail. His red hair and freckle stained face made him only desirable to a certain breed of women, most of whom he did not enjoy the bedroom antics of. He took what he could, and in the end, made them what he wanted.

Mother's don't always ask: Are you here to ruin my life? Because they should more often. Not only their children, but also--and especially--a pencil dicked mentalist named Aric Madden; the jesus you died for. And you were even one of the good ones. Thing is, as always, a lot of assholes lived who shouldn't've.

* * *

Really though, if you hadn't given him that bus fare back in '96, and sat next to him and started talking with him then...well you know the rest, but really, your life wouldn't have amounted to much anyway. As a hobby we keep all of your scenarios mapped out: the best you would have done from any of your unlived alternatives was having sex with Pat Benetar's goddaughter; the one who got a dishonorable mention in the Gravity's Rainbow liner notes. So don't complain, people will remember you.

Aric had this idea that he would set up this group therapy deal downtown for mothers with postpartum depression. They were new mothers, meaning limited wear, and they were vulnerable, meaning that even a physical shit stain like Aric Madden could have any one of them.

This is what you discussed hunched over on your stools in that humble imitation of a Derry pub on the outskirts of Plymouth county. It was all just talk whilst getting drunk, but then he called you one month later and it didn't just sound like talk anymore.

He told you about how they prefer it in the ass on account of them being so disgusted with their own reproductive organs. That they liked being mistreated to counterbalance their feelings of resentment for those noisome little pink squirming shits they were stuck with carrying around everywhere. Soon he had a congregation of some twenty self loathing mothers at his disposal and Aric being Aric soon was looking for more.

* * *

The trouble with starting a cult was that it would involve actually thinking up a cause. Not for his subjects' sake of course, they were nothing more than husks now, but for the sake of the press. He lacked the imagination to appropriate ideas into his own theology, and so in the end he just made himself the god and the rest he played by ear. Any women who had suffered even the slightest trauma during the delivery of their child was encouraged by the fliers he left on telegraph poles, on the corkboards outside AA meetings and sex addict support groups, these women would come to him to be set up with a series of personal counseling sessions. Eventually the women would agree to spend time in his halfway house, which was a shithole he got on the cheap; "stigmatized real estate", on account of it being the site of some modern day witch trials, which aside all else, had left the floorboards blackened and unsightly.

He brought you in as his first leftenant, mostly because there weren't enough hours in the day for poor Aric to maintain a household whilst trying to engage his subjects in a succession of orgies that stopped only for lunch, and a light meal around 11pm.

You chose never to have any of them, but what attracted you to this sick mess was the money. These women had agreed to hand over everything, and many of them being tied up in divorce proceedings were still able to leech funds from their significant other; Aric took the lot. But while everyone was busy fornicating in the name of MDAADT, you took control of all financial assets to branch out beyond that little shithole in Massachusetts.

* * *

You took it to California where the real money was. Getting out of that place could only be good for you anyway since those pissed off ex, and almost ex-husbands had taken your face down from the rumours that were spreading around and there had been a few physical incidents in public already. Aric could do his own damn groceries from then on, you figured. See how he likes the feel of fist busting cartilage.

LA was the cakewalk you expected, so much so that you decided it was easier to keep them here than ship them back to Plymouth. Place was a shithole anyway. You wondered how long it would take Aric to even notice you were gone. A week? Did he even know you had a cell?

You didn't even need to buy a place; that 40-something in Burbank just handed you the keys, and you made her an honorary Sadhu or some shit with her own special robe and everything. Still, there was notably fewer orgies and less brainwashing in your parish than what Aric had going on. You were more like a father to them, and even though you really wanted nothing to do with it, you were the one who would be remembered as the true leaderhead of what ended up being one of the few cults communities that was actually beneficial to its members.

The same could not be said for Aric's lot. Once he realised you were gone, he had an acid flashback and freaked about some imminent paramilitary breach involving flame throwers and german shepards with nerve-gas releasing teeth. He fled the county after convincing his women it was time for a mass suicide, only he didn't stick around long to see if they went through with it.

He soon caught wind of what you were up to in LA and made his way there; recruiting no less than half a dozen women on the Greyhound he spent his last $10 on. By the time he found the house, you were long gone with over $100,000 of mothers' money, and oh how they wept in your absence.

* * *

It wasn't until Aric started causing a stink in Burbank that you became a known fugitive. Worldwide your face was on the news, and you found yourself stuck in London, not really knowing anyone and soon it would be all over for you.

It started out as a noise complaint and escalated from there. Something so extraordinarily disastrous only Aric Madden could be responsible. He didn't have any loaded guns; all of the ammunition he had wasted on target practice in the desert. He did have three crates of hand grenades though, and the ones that worked did bring some unwanted attention.

You were chased down by a young couple who had started out that morning with the intention of robbing a number of restaurants, but figured your reward money was a safer bet. They stalked you down a back alley, and the man knocked you down while the woman unloaded a pistol right at your ear; the news had talked you up to Mansonesque proportions, and so they thought deafening you and blindfolding you would be a good idea to get you around with minimum fuss.

Using the sound of the busy streets you made a run for it, and shook your blindfold loose but you couldn't hear a fucking thing. The couple reported you anyway, and within the hour a fiery mob had stretched out across a closing perimeter.

* * *

What made it worse was that London itself had recently fallen victim to its own wave of cults. Why you were there in the first place. Most of them had been dismantled by authorities before any kind of mass suicide could take place and so you knew that there would be potentially thousands of these pre-conditioned humans wandering the streets, and who gave a shit about mothers at that point, it was about the handing over of worldly possessions, and cash. Lots of cash.

As well as there being a lot of zombies in the fall out, there were also a lot of pissed off friends and families. And the way the news put it, it wasn't so much of a stretch to implicate you in every single one of those groups, as far as anyone was concerned you were the second coming of the IRA.

While you were still on the run Aric turned himself in, pleaded insanity, and cut a deal. The women followed soon after; they all loved you, but they also testified in court that you were the one and only true leader. Because as far as they knew it, there was nothing on this mortal coil that would harm you one way or the other.

You died in a haunted forest during a repeat of the Korean War (pt. 2)

No one much liked you, it didn't take a genius to work that out, but gee, someone had to take a handle of this thing. The fellow who had died twenty metres back, that was a tough one. You weighed up carrying him, because after all it was his God-given right to be treated to a proper burial, even if he came off as some kind of troubled agnostic at best--but you made a promise you would come back for him after this was over.

Then you lost another one. The poor boy who you tried to keep calm and close to your bosom the whole time, mumbling that dear song about his mother's cheesecake, oh goodness, how could he just run off like that? You made a short prayer but really was there any hope for him? Even if he found safe haven in the company of some family who weren't secretly feeding him nitro glycerin, only to be sent back to us in a million pieces; what methods would they brainwash him with to follow these cults of warmongering affinity. What beliefs were there out here? Not Buddha surely, you knew of him in a round about sense and certainly he was a good enough guy, certainly one of the more tolerable, fictitious deities. But this was something else. You made another short prayer, and you hated to think that no good would come of it.

God would guide you, you were sure of that, but it was certainly an odd path He had chosen. Gunfire was growing, each individual ping of each bullet rang louder inside your ear until you were sure that you were being led to a defining moment of faith. Without putting yourself down, you were without doubt the larger of the targets in the group, but your faith would guide you, and shield you from any harm that would come to the others too. The volume of the battle had escalated to the point that you didn't hear the next body fall backwards with a thud against the damp earth.

Though you were close, there was no reason for them to be shooting at you. You were well hidden by the scrub of the forest; there were many layers of arbor separating you from them. It was another non-bullet death, and this time people couldn't not notice it.

* * *

You heard them chatting among themselves as you led on ahead, and they weren't letting you in on it. Overhearing words here and there, parts of sentences, it didn't take you long to work up to the idea that you weren't all from that mall in Pomona. There were all kinds. That one guy who finally opened his mouth to speak, the one from the Universal Studios tour, the brother of the man fallen now a good five hundred metres back. He hadn't done a thing because it had taken him up until now to really know if any of this was happening. And as he knew it, you knew it. God had brought you all here for a reason and you had your theories.

--Wait, wait how many people had grandfathers in the Korean war? one says over your shoulder.
--Well mine...I think mine...man I dunno.
--I was a runaway, the fuck you think I know about my grandfather?

And so forth, and you walked with your hands over your ears from then on.

* * *

After what felt like another twenty minutes, you felt a slight tug at your elbow, and then a dragging weight, and you looked down to find a small girl hanging off your arm. The sound of war flooded back to you like a television switched on at full volume. You stopped to let everyone else catch up, but there was no one else. This little girl of about six or seven, wasn't part of the group. She was a tiny Korean girl, the base of her dress soaked in mud with little splotches here and there and on her face. The group had left you, and maybe if you'd seen which direction they'd headed you could have caught up again. You'd been walking and praying aloud, very loud, and you were a walking target, and they weren't about ready to deal with the kind of crazy you were dishing out right there. You'd never thought of yourself as crazy, right? Maybe it stood out more in a place like this. With people like that.

--You're not safe out here my angel, you said to her but she just smiled through the gaps of missing kid teeth, and there was a small amount of blood in her hair as you patted her. It wasn't hers.
--Where can you take me? you asked. A bullet shot into the mud, showing you how soft it was and it made a little sloppy sound. Then another. And another.
--Were you sent here by God? You were weren't you? And she kept smiling and she nodded like she didn't even know what she was nodding to, and there was a little sloppy sound, and you felt it as well and you thought maybe being a big girl would save you, that God didn't want you to lose all that weight for a reason. But it wasn't like that.

You fell forwards into the mud and you could still see through one eye, and girl looked at you with a tilted head, like you were some sick puppy dog she could no longer help.