THE MODERN OF TONGUES

Shane Jesse Christmass

     Oswald Kersey was suspicious of speaking in tongues, that glossolalia, which was quackness for the believers; he had no need for a debate between himself and the conservatives, those evangelical Christians whose approach to the Christian Scriptures required addressing the unknown in a contamination that had all the frugality of a modern street revival.
     He was bored. He knew he had the most modern of tongues, but being a janitor in a high school didn't allow him to bring forth the ghost and fire too often. What Oswald liked to do after work was sit at his kitchen table and practise asemic writing, for the spirit coursing through helped in his weakness. This writing prayed from the end of his pen like ink-black babbling with an international style.
     With superhuman strength, to the astonishment of all who read it, the writing was like extroversion, and contrary to theories, the writing was completely unrelated to psychopathology.
     Oswald sipped on water from a paper cup. Asemic writing encouraged plain people like Oswald to learn an unlearned language. What he wrote was an unearthed direction.
     The New Testament described tongues largely as speech addressed to God, but Oswald wasn't convinced, no matter how convincing his asemic writing was.
     Witnesses who stood within Acts 2 described tongues-speaking, occurring in Jerusalem during the time of the Pentecost.
     Oswald drank from the paper cup. He had the oven door open, and the oven was on; this was how he managed to heat the kitchen. Glossolalia as practised today is unintelligible to everybody including the speaker.
     On May 8, 2009, after taking his medication, Oswald felt his tongue slightly move. His body demonstrated the spiritual gift, as if Oswald was Christ the wanderer.
     "I know you from the day you carved me," Oswald thought at the time.
     The paraffin burnt slowly in the corner of the table. It burned in a porcelain jar. The reason for this? The wax was put there to attempt to burn down the theatrical past, especially music.
     The ABC news, last Thursday, pointed to a map and proclaimed that "the people of Earth needed to start afresh!"
     The atmosphere was canned into bundling clouds; they contained everything it seemed, mainly particles of what was ahead, what was in store for humankind. The conclusion was that the world would crash.
     People assumed the rightful stance of panic; people sought out safety with their Numerologists. One person was reported as having been told that an entire skyscraper would collapse on them.
     "I think the entire building will be a grey colour, massive in size; it will hold dark secrets over you," this person muttered.
     Meteorologists made senile-type reports; they issued them through the media. They claimed that an earthquake would occur, out there in the Atlantic; it would shift the beach sand far and wide, and they stated that specific wavelengths of doom would fall upon the populace.
     The ocean had no idea about its demise; this was a heaving and ballooning circumstance for the ocean. The ocean wasn't happy.
     The scientists didn't notice, through their sleep-numbed eyes, that part of their laboratory had caught on fire overnight. Part of the CRT machine still worked, but their LCD monitors were now busted.
     In the desert NASA let off a giant weather balloon. It was a successful launch. There were no other stories in relation to this. NASA's projects were simultaneously crushed.
     The nightly weatherman on the television news reported that "the atmosphere is important to us. We need its roughness; we need those wonderful, rounding nights where the light comes down with an initial great trouble."
     The Roman Catholic Church held a crisis meeting. They talked about "things with real passion." The meeting was shown live on TV. Many people looking on giggled into their soupy broth.
     Since 1970 no one on Earth had been truly convinced about the life they were forced into living. No one knew how to measure up to Mars and Jupiter anymore. No one experienced the wonderful nights of a true master anymore.
     The Vatican decided to rent out an old Scout Hall. It was a packed auditorium. His Holiness laid down the law; everything he mentioned was to be firmly enforced. No cool change was to be detected on the radar, so there was no point in trying to save ourselves. It was important that those nuclear reactors be considerable fun, not machinery to induce paranoia.
     The long flowing snow of the polar icecaps melted. About eight a.m. the melting was completed by the solar radiation leaking down from the sky. The clay walls at the moon base were being eroded by aerosols.
     The space animals started chanting. The armoury shot ICBMs with a firmly enforced reference sensor. KABOOM! The outer space amoeba took great delight in the catastrophe. They rolled on their backs, their fat bellies in the moon-glow, malicious pleasure on their lips. Condensation nuclei they were called. The mysterious was their nickname.
     The spaceships took off. On board was the huge office of Gilda McCarthy. She had packed her most experienced husband, her children. Her self-importance was huge, a new experience for the astronauts on board.
     Gilda could feel her hair unravel in the weightlessness of space.
     "I think if I tie my hair back, into a bun, I will not know how or what I am," she muttered.
     A Case Study into the Theoretical Benefits of Digital Immortality: Celia O'Carroll had just installed a separate steam condenser in his room. He was a resident in the public hotel. The steam condenser was made in India and it appeared that it was a product of high quality.
     The company that supplied the steam condenser was once, but had now been displaced, as the world's premier supplier of cotton goods. The year was 1905. The month of June. Celia O'Carroll was staying in Lisbon. Celia O'Carroll worked with Lewis Paul at the Lisbon Singularity Institute. They were attempting to patent a type of digital immortality. Complete copies of mortality! Backups of the human life! In the laboratory, in theory, they tried to stuff the information into the machine amid the processes of noise.
     In May of that year the Singularity Institute launched an internet campaign whereby they promoted the necessary biochemical requirements to implement the digital immortality. Celia and Lewis had worked on a prototype in a factory they had rented out. This was early in 1903.
     Oswald Kersey was frozen in front of the celluloid. He was in the cinema watching the saucy lead actor. The actor was being projected onto the XXX sensual wall. The actor was tailored, bespoke with a buttoned-down airline collar. There was no chance he was a playboy. Oswald flicked through the pages of Thirty & Dirty Issue One. He looked at the pin-ups, taking down notes on how to work his tool.
     Later that evening Oswald Kersey heard police sirens. The sirens headed across the city square like a hessian bag of wit, like four golden hetero-icons. This was ant street and Oswald Kersey was the TV presenter.
     Oswald Kersey's money was spent on a temptress. He'd seen her in the cinema as well, with her draught of silhouette, fibbing about the weather and talking about the latest R&B singer.
     She was whip-smart, that blue vamp, schizophrenic with fire hair. She was a real movie star, like the ones who had 'turncoat x' shaved into the back of their heads.
     The cinema was Oswald Kersey's reluctant warfare. He made a bank withdrawal and with the coins bought a copy of The World of the Male Maid #16. Those men were the real swans, straight and bent. They were carnal dabbers, fucking with action fatigue. They should've been projected on the contemporary screen, all pallid.
     As Oswald Kersey left the cinema he abhorred his own walk.
     He stopped by the nearest train station.
     For the past two weeks, he's felt later than still.