Jenny closed her eyes as she stepped out in front of the speeding truck in an ecstasy of abandon. She had never realized, until now, that life sucked so badly—had for all of these years—that now, when she decided to end it, she would be looking forward to oblivion; not just as an escape from this horrible clutching fate, but as an alternative to some ‘happy ending’ that might somehow restore her to her former position as ruthlessly manipulative sex object dangling in the meat market of bad ideas.

And somehow the truck stopped even as Mozart's symphonic genius continued to narrate her gruesome fate, thundering like a song out of heaven escorting her through hell, preventing Burreese's audio plague from casting her into insanity with the rest.

“Oh fuck me—oh that’s right, you horny fiends have that covered.”

She was being grabbed, prodded, grasped and pressed to the ground—then she was being lifted. Strong grasping hands held her ankles, her wrists, and her head. Other hands were tearing at her dress and somehow she did not feel a thing. It was like she was having an out of body experience, like this was happening to someone else. She felt her legs being spread apart even as bodies crowded beneath her keeping her from hitting the ground—a long low moan escaped her body—not her mind. Her mind felt nothing.

Something warm and gooey splashed her face.

Her right foot hit the ground.

Her other foot fell.

She was on the pavement now, on her back, a Mexican on either side kissing her hands and feeling her up while another drooled into her mouth.

Her right hand felt warm and something like small stones caked in goo filled her palm where a moment ago there were strange lips kissing it.

The wide dirty face that was clumsily kissing her and drooling into her mouth as it failed somehow to articulate its mantra exploded in a shower of red, white and gray.

Her eyes were splashed with goo, and since the face and hands kissing her left hand had disappeared she was able to use both of her hands to clear away the mess on her face and in her eye sockets. She looked up to see a bare-chested old man, in his early seventies, though still fit and strong looking. He was wearing only blue jeans and a black hat. On his chest and abdomen was a crucifixion scene tattooed in gory heavy metal style detail, as if a heavy metal guitarist had become a holy roller, and had somehow lost none of his propensity for outrage. The version of Jesus on this cross was actually spitting on the Roman soldier that speared him.

The owner of the outrageous tattoo was no less combative than the martyr tattooed on his body. He held a black bible to his heart with his left hand and swung a ball-peen hammer with the other, destroying wide Mexican heads as he chanted some maniacal saying, that she had no wish to hear—but she could hear it.

Oh God Mozart is gone!

I will catch it. I am susceptible!

Jenny had not been recruited for the think tank just because she had model quality looks. She did have a 165 IQ. And she put it to good use now, deciding on erecting her own audio baffle by chanting her own mantra in between the chants of the old man, who had cleared the area around her. He was waving her to her feet with his bloody hammer hand, unable to say anything but, “Through all this, however, I am close at hand, ready to give My heavenly strength to those who are willing to fight.”

She scrambled to her bloody feet, reduced to wearing her slip, and even as she wondered how a person had been caught in such a long audio loop as this man, she calibrated her own mantra to fill the space in between his holy mantra, “God is in Towson—let us go!”

The old man knocked the chin off of a fat kid as she said her mantra. He then began his, “Through all this,” and flattened the side of the cop’s head, “However,” as he kicked in the balls of the last Mexican with his pointy cowboy boots, “I am close at hand,” as he buried the round end of the hammer in the top of a fat dykish head, “Ready to give My heavenly strength,” as he pried the hammer out of the splitting mess of a skull, “to those who are willing to fight,” and the skull of the large black bus driver flopped on the neck that was broken with the square end of the hammer.

She chanted, “God is in Towson—let us go,” and, finding that she had become possessed with an overwhelming urge to get to Towson, looked at the old maniac meaningfully and then leaped for the passenger side of the truck as he made for the driver’s side, the street now momentarily clear of aggressors.

They both sat side by side in the rumbling dump truck as it rolled over the fallen bodies and tore cars in half, alternately looking to each other for encouragement and chanting their mantras.

Jenney then saw a pen before her. A lingering vestige of her ego reminded her that she might be free of her mantra if only she destroyed her ears.

She looked away from her savage savior out the window and down Light Street, where a baby was being ripped apart by two women tugging at it.

She drove the pen home, experiencing a pressure wave as if a car tire had popped inside her head.

She switched the pen to her right hand as she began to get faint, and looked up and out to the right again toward the Cheesecake Factory, to steady herself as her ‘God is in Towson’ chant continued unevenly.

Then it was gone, not a sound in the world except for the sound of the ocean rushing in the sea shell that she had held to her ear when she was a little girl in Cape May wondering what the world held for her.

She reeled drunkenly, unable to even keep her balance while seated. Clutching the handle of the door to hold herself upright she looked at the pickup lane to see a man in a black suit, wearing ear protection. He had a baby strapped to his front, and another to his back, in the aboriginal and modern carry arrangement. He had another baby under his left arm. In his right hand was a handgun, that was momentarily blowing away the face of a maniacal woman who had her hands reaching out for the baby under his arm.

We never thought of that, she thought to herself. Children without language skills will be among the most immune. The bastards plan on starting from scratch.

She looked to her left, to the crazed old man chanting his overlong biblical mantra, his hammer and bible on the rumbling dashboard of his truck; a veritable war machine that was crushing lesser vehicles like soda cans as he turned left and headed out Gay Street.

Wanting to keep the old kook headed to Towson Jenny timed her mantra—though she would never hear it—to occupy the pause between his, and croaked awkwardly, having not realized until now how important her hearing was to her speech, “God is in Towson—let us go!”

Jenny thought to herself in the self-deprecating manner she often employed to deflect guilt, remorse, and that most nagging and inconvenient of emotions, hope, You hypocritical, Atheist, gold-digging, slut bitch, you just might make it.