SOMETIMES A CIGAR …. IS JUST A CIGAR

 “Let me tell you Amy sunshine, my books are selling.  They’re making money”.

 “Yeah that’s great Dad, you can put it towards paying your next lot of legal fees”.

 “That wasn’t my fault!  No one should be ashamed of telling the truth”.

 “Dad!” Amy exclaimed, in frustration “You wrote to those poor people telling them their dead son had never existed!  That was a bloody rotten thing to do.  People were calling you evil.  The vilest troll in Britain!  How do you think I feel having people saying that about my own Dad?!”

 “You’re always gonna have wingnuts who believe everything the Establishment puts out”.

 “The only wingnut round here is you!”

 “Innit time you were at school?”

 “Yeah I’m just going”, Amy picked up her school-bag and slung it over her shoulder “Let me remind you what the Judge said though.  That you were lucky you didn’t get clobbered with a jail sentence.  If you keep this crap up you will.  What’ll happen to me then?  You’re all I’ve got, God help me”.

 “None of that really matters”, Len muttered “I expect at some point They’ll take me out.  Send a hitman after me.  No one should be surprised if they heard I’ve died suddenly”.

 “Oh great”, said Amy , rolling her eyes “That’s really reassuring me that is!  Why can’t you drop all this shit?  Just concentrate on being a hairdresser.  That’s what you’re meant to be.  Not Hasting’s answer to David Icke!”

 “People buy my books because they want The Truth”, Len insisted.

 “Huh”, said Amy, heading to the front door “I ‘spect the only reason they bought the last one was because it had nude pictures of Princess Diana in it.  And I swear you Photoshopped them.  See you later”.

 She opened the front door, and then slammed it shut behind her.

 Len stood at the first-floor living-window of their flat, and watched as Amy strode purposefully out of the main entrance of the building.  She didn’t look up at him and wave, which was a sure sign she was cross with him.  She walked away up the street, putting on her headphones.  Len was proud of her.  Sometimes he marvelled that he and his daft ex-wife had managed to produce such a bright, no-nonsense kid between them.  But it was a sad fact that she didn’t understand his mission.  All he was trying to do was to try and prove to the public that they should look below the surface of the world they were living in, to not swallow the rubbish that was spouted on the mainstream news.  

 The bulk of his argument was that most of the people they saw on the News didn’t really exist, or they were doubled up.  He had tried to persuade Amy that most of the politicians didn’t exist.

 “Of course they do, Dad!” she had cried out “I’ve seen the House of Commons on the News, when it’s packed out.  Are you saying they’re all cardboard cut-outs and glove-puppets or something?!  That’s nuts, even for you that’s nuts!”

 For years now he had been writing his beliefs on his website, regaling his readers with long stream-of-conscious written monologues on whatever news story had caught his eye that day.  His readers were sharply divided into 2 groups: his ardent Believers who hung on his every word, and believed he was some kind of prophet, and the Scoffers.  The ones who treated him as a freakish sideshow whom they could cheerfully abuse at will.  Len was sometimes irritated by the constant attackers, the ones who turned up time-after-time, but he believed he had a mission to bring The Truth to people.  To wake them out of their dream.  A certain amount of mud-slinging was inevitable.  He had to expect it.  It went with the territory.  Jesus was crucified.  Gandhi was assassinated.  Len got trolled on the Internet.  

 And then he took it all a step too far.  He had written to the parents of a young man who had been randomly murdered in broad daylight in the street by a complete stranger.  It was a crime which had sickened and appalled the entire nation.  All except Len.  Who had refused to believe it had really happened.  He believed it was a fake story, conjured up by the ubiquitous Them, to ferment hatred and disunity amongst the populace.  In the event he managed to unite everybody against himself.  

 The parents of the young man had taken him to court.  At first he had been delighted.  A chance to get his message into the mainstream media.  Except it went against him from the start.  Everyone – the court, the press, the public at large – were disgusted by him.  Sympathy was firmly on the side of the young man’s parents, as anyone could have told him it would be.

 Len read the comments under the story in one of the nation’s biggest-selling Online newspapers.  “Sick bastard”.  “I don’t understand how anyone can be so evil”.  “Why would anybody do anything so vile?”  “Evil troll, he should be locked up”.

 Such comments had briefly floored him.  He had honestly never expected public opinion to go so badly against him.  But then he rallied himself.  Well of course I’d be pilloried, he thought.  THEY will make sure of that.  THEY won’t be happy until they’ve crucified me, just like they did to Jesus Christ 2000 years ago …. Except he didn’t believe Jesus had ever existed either.  Jesus was just another character They had invented to control the masses.  Even so, Len liked to imagine himself as a Christ-like martyr to his cause.

 He had avoided a jail sentence by the skin of his teeth.  Instead he had got landed with a huge compensation payout to the young man’s parents and all the legal costs.  In desperation he collected all his blog pieces together in book form and put them out for sale.  They generated much the same deeply divided reaction as his website had done, but at least they sold.

 Len paused at the window.  He noticed it again.  A grey car parked on the other side of the street.  He had seen it before.  A middle-aged couple were sitting inside.  The man looked like an ageing geek.  Beard, glasses, woolly hat.  The woman was constantly smiling, as though she was in a permanent state of blissed-out contentment.

 “Huh, not exactly great undercover skills”, Len grunted “If they’re not careful, I’ll really give ‘em something to spy on!”

 His mobile phone buzzed with news of an incoming message.  Len hurriedly seized it.

 “Hey mate.  Dunno if you’ve seen this, but there’s some incident going down on Hastings seafront.  That’s not far from you is it?  Could be another false flag event.  Thought you should know.  Doggerman”.

 Doggerman was one of his most ardent supporters, avidly reading everything Len posted on his website.

 “Cheers mate, I’m on it”, Len replied.

 Len decided to get the bus, rather than drive.  Parking was a nightmare everywhere these days, but if something was going down, it would be nigh-on impossible.  Buses ran regularly into town from the bottom of his street.  If he got a move-on he could catch the next one, which would get him down there in a few minutes.

 He grabbed his jacket, wallet and phone and headed for the door.

 

 As the bus jolted along the streets, Len feverishly scrolled through Twitter and Google, to try and find out what was going on.  There were the usual twits plaintively asking “what’s going on in Hastings?  Cops swarming round the seafront”.  It seemed to be a traffic incident.  A car had ploughed into the chairs and tables outside a cafe.

 “It’s just like the Glasgow Bin Lorry Crash”, Len exclaimed, excitedly.

 He realised an old lady, sat opposite him, was giving him a quizzical look.  Len frowned at her and went back to his phone.

 Infuriatingly, no one on the bus mentioned what was going on in town at all.  People got on and off.  Kids deposited their little bikes and scooters near the luggage rack.  Others were obsessed with their phones and their music players.  Typical bloody Brits, thought Len, they’d carry on as normal if a bloody great sinkhole opened up underneath them.

 No one mentioned anything until they got further into town, when a man in a pink shirt asked the driver what was going on.

 “Some idiot’s ploughed into a cafe”, said the driver “We’ll be stopping at Queen’s Road”.

 Queen’s Road?  Thought Len, still excited.  There’s always a Queen’s Road, or a Queen’s Street.  There was one mentioned during the London Attacks a few months ago.  All part of the Pagan significance.  Just like why Princess Diana had to be assassinated in Paris, which is an Occult headquarters.  

 

 “So what was all that about down on the front then?”

 “Oh a taxi had to swerve to avoid a bike.  Ran into some tables and chairs outside a caff.  Good job no one was sitting there.  Not even any fag-heads”.

 Len was sitting in a coffee-shop at the back of a supermarket.  The day was turning out to be a total wash-out, and the conversation on a nearby table between two off-duty bus-drivers wasn’t helping matters.

 “Bloody bikes everywhere”, one said “Lycra Nazi’s.  They don’t give a toss who they inconvenience or upset.   Amazed it doesn’t happen more often”.

 A simple traffic incident.  

 By now Len was glowering so much that a woman in a raincoat, clutching a coffee and copy of The Big Issue,  decided to sit as far away from him as possible.

 Len was aware of the slightly nervous look she had given him.  He was often regarded as a brooding nutter in public places.  On the Internet he was a Prophet, almost a Messianic figure to his Twitter followers and the devoted readers of his website.  A passionate defender of freedom of speech.  In Real Life he was a nutter.

 His phone buzzed.  Len opened his email.

 “Just checking you’re alright mate”, it was Doggerman “Still no sign of it on the old MSM.  Media blackout?  Take care out there”.

 Len switched off his phone.

 Of course he could just do the simple thing.  He could reply that it had turned out to be nothing more than a traffic incident.  Move along now, there’s nothing to see.  But there were problems with that one.  It was doubtful Doggerman would believe him.  Probably do a lot of mental nose-tapping and sage nodding of the head.  For a moment he was tempted to put out that he had been silenced, but that would only provoke a barrage of questions from everybody, and the Skeptics would demand hard proof.  The Skeptics always demanded hard proof.  Something he had never had.

 He suddenly felt every inch of his 52 years.  Why had he started all this?  Because he was sickened by Establishment cover-ups that’s why.  But to do simple undercover, anonymous investigations was not enough to satisfy the angry ego raging inside of him, which demanded that he be heard at all times.

 “I could just disappear”, he thought “Not physically.  I’ve got Amy to consider, otherwise I might.  But just vanish from cyberspace with no explanation.  Create a mystery about myself.  That would get them going.  Other conspiracy theorists would be writing about me for years.  ‘Len Small went off to investigate a story in Hastings, and that was the last anyone ever heard of him’”.

 His books would sell like hot cakes, that was for sure, and the likes of Doggerman could be relied upon to keep the flame alive.

 And then, at some point in the future, he would suddenly and miraculously return, with a A Big Story to tell.  A massive story that would blow everything else out of the water.  It would tear down the whole rotten fabric of this thing we laughingly call Civilisation.

 Len nodded to himself, and put his phone in the inside pocket of his jacket.  He drained his coffee and got to his feet.  Len Small was about to become A Man Of Mystery … for the time being anyway.