“Morons! The world is full of morons!”

Those were the words of an alcoholic obsessed with pornography, junk food, and an unbending indifference towards existence. This is Lester Morgan, a man who has spent a lifetime paving his way deeper into his own inferno.

“People have no idea what they’re doing to the planet,” Lester would compulsively write online wherever he had the opportunity to be read. “We’re all going to die ‘cause there are just too many morons, morons who think they’ve got it all figured out!”

More than a pastime, Lester believed it was his calling to correct the human psyche by spilling his thoughts on cyberspace. Whether it be in forums, comment sections, blog posts or social media pages, he had an unfading belief that he was placed in this world to become the prophet of the century.

“Human beings are the most destructive animal on the planet,” he would write. “The more of us are born, the more the environment gets ruined, because of all the garbage and all the natural resources we exploit. We have become the tumor of planet Earth!”

He would also publish long articles that reeked of poor grammar and repulsive content. Some of the subjects he discussed included:

The reasons why black people will never live up to Martin Luther King’s dreams.

Drug traffickers are real heroes because they help bring to light the reasons why society is so fucked up.

Nothing becomes more evil than an unwanted baby. Abortion needs to be protected forever!

Some of the usual responses he got were:

“Fuck you!”

“You are in desperate need of a blowjob, brother.”

“Because of your filthy writing, I agree abortion should remain legal and free of charge.”

This obsession with needing to connect with the world through language began when he purchased his first smartphone at a bargain price. Immediately after Lester premiered his first Twitter and Facebook account, he discovered the immense outreach a single sentence could have among thousands of strangers, if not millions. Thus, he transformed this hobby into a life-long vocation.

Those who read or responded to Lester’s rhetoric had no clue about his living conditions. This was a man who rented a room in a knackered apartment owned by Sergeant Curnow, an ex-Army veteran who had turned into a narcotics dealer. Sometimes, to pay his rent while unemployed, Lester became his landlord’s delivery boy until he would find a graveyard shift job.

His bedroom mirrored a hoarder’s. Trash bags and a collection of items that had expired or began to decompose, like food, laid around creating a stench only appreciated in abandoned restrooms. Sometimes, he would get into violent arguments with his landlord about the presence of cockroaches and rats that gravitated towards Lester’s room because of his inexplicable need to pile up wasteful material.

Without any prospects or skills, Lester was close to reaching the age of forty. He never reminisced about his past, as he had done a remarkable job annihilating the neurons that stored long-term memory with heavy drinking and smoking.

Those patterns of irresponsible malnourishment began to take a toll on his health. As he got older, Lester frequented the toilet more often. His bowels became a jester that enjoyed giving its owner false bathroom warnings, and often surprised him with bouts of diarrhea that grew darker in color over time.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

“What?” shouted Lester.

“How much longer are you gonna be in there?” said Sergeant Curnow from the other side of the door of the only bathroom in the apartment.

“Gimme a break,” Lester said whilst releasing intermittent flatulence that resembled a humid trombone. “Been feeling sick all week.”

“Well,” said Curnow, “you ain’t the only one with an anus in this place!”

These unpredictable digestive movements also placed his employment in jeopardy. In his last job as a convenience store cashier during the depths of night, Lester had the entire business to attend. One evening, thieves looted the establishment as no employees were seen stationed behind the paying counter. The store managers later discovered that Lester couldn’t remove himself from the bathroom due to his intestinal predicaments.

“You’re fired!” said his boss.

“Yeah, whatever,” Lester said, “you’d say the same thing if I was dying of cancer. Greedy asshole!”

Finding a job afterwards became impossible. He couldn’t seek references from any of his previous employers, and had no alternative but to return to selling heroin and fentanyl with Sergeant Curnow.

“Screw it!” Lester thought. “If I have to sell shit to junkies for the rest of my life, so be it. Why should I get all the bad luck anyway?”

One day, Lester had twenty-seven dollars left to spend, and used it to buy a large pepperoni pizza for himself and a six-pack of beer. His plan was to relax in his room watching movies on his phone. Not before long, his digestive track surprised him with another round of explosive defecation.

He rushed to the bathroom carrying his mobile device and, as usual, Lester sat there for as long as he felt he needed, scrolling his phone’s screen with his greasy fingers. 

While visiting one of his preferred forums, he stumbled upon the headline:

What’s the worst thing happening to you these days? Feel free to share.

Lester found an opportunity to vent about his health troubles and how he was unfairly terminated from his job. He typed a five-paragraph response detailing and exaggerating his quandary, and went further elaborating falsehoods about his boss, calling him a sex-trafficker. 

After posting it, he received numerous messages of sympathy and support, all of which vindicated him from any wrongdoing he could have done in his former job. However, a particular commentator who identified himself as Chadbro5669, responded in a matter that did not satisfy Lester:

“You probably eat tons of crap and drink enough ‘till you can’t hate yourself. That’s why you’re all day on the toilet and got kicked out of work. You hate yourself so much you kill yourself with everything you put in your mouth. That’s your real problem.”

What!

Lester wrote back: “Hey! Who are you? You don’t know me! You have no right to make idiotic assumptions about someone you’ve never met!”

Chadbro responded two minutes later: “I know plenty of mofos like you. You talk just like them. You blame everything on everyone except yourselves. We don’t need you screwing up those who actually want to do good.”

Lester was no stranger to attacks, but for some elusive reason, the words of this highly confident commentator pricked his most sensitive spot, and destroyed whatever minute sense of humanity he had left.

“You probably bend over and lick your ass when you take a shit ‘cause that’s all you’ve talked about since you started.”

Chadbro was far from quitting: “Do humanity a favor. Find the word ‘euthanasia’ in the dictionary and proceed fast with what it means.”

“I bet you keep women chained up in your basement,” Lester wrote.

“I bet your mother brought you to this world just like how you’re spending time in the bathroom. You must’ve stunk like squirrel shit when you were born!”

Those words pierced Lester’s soul with excruciating intensity, as he never knew who his mother was. 

Having grown up in two separate foster homes, none of his adoptive parents successfully rescued him from the internal inferno that perpetually molested him with the notion that he was unwanted trash. Hence why, in his perspective, life was not worthy to fight for, and never understood why people developed long-term plans or ambitions to have a career or start a family. In Lester’s mind, everybody was a lonely wanderer in a purposeless universe.

“You won’t get away with this, Chadbro,” he thought, and the ceaseless exchange of personal insults and witty use of language between both strangers persisted for well over five hours.

Lester had lost track of the time. With his thoughts fully immersed in doing his best to humiliate his opponent, he forgot that he had been sitting on the toilet this long.

“Wait a minute,” he thought, sensing that something about his body felt out of place. “I can’t feel my legs!”

After all that time wasted with his eyes glued to his phone, Lester finally laid down his apparatus and noticed that both of his limbs, from the thighs all the way down to his toes, had turned black as charcoal.

“AAAAAH!”

His landlord, the sergeant, had just returned to the apartment and found Lester on the bathroom floor, covered in feces while hollering and slithering out of control, and called for an ambulance.

In the emergency room, the attending physician examined a sedated Lester. Other than having lost complete blood flow to his legs, the patient had undiagnosed diabetes, clogged arteries, near-failed kidneys, high blood pressure, and a number of many other ailments, to which the doctor assessed that the only method that would save his life was amputation.

Copyright © 2023 Don Luis Zavala – All Rights Reserved