Kingdom of Fear

by Hunter S. Thompson

  That fucker, I thought. The creepy little bastard. That was good, putting that together—just a sliver inside, frozen. All the rest had turned to mush and blood—it’s actually pretty good to eat, elk heart . . . this one wasn’t going to be eaten anytime soon; it looked like a gizzard of some human being. Bigger than a human heart. “Yeah, maybe . . .” I said.

  “I thought so, I thought it was you, when I saw that ice,” he said. “I haven’t told them yet; you know, they’re still out here, the police task force, digging for new evidence, people sleeping in the woods . . . Goddamn, Doc, I’m glad you told me. We have had a hell of a night here. It’s been horrible.”

  The joke was over. I was never formally accused of it; Jack told the sheriff it was just a false alarm. “I know this guy,” he said, “and he is not the killer.”

  Epilogue

  That is what I mean about personal security in this town. You can buy a lot of protection, if you are filthy rich, and it obviously makes those people feel better about themselves—surrounded at all times by hundreds of greedy freelance cops with a license to kill anytime, anywhere, for any reason blessed by God. They are volatile people, at best, and always dangerous.

  We get more black-truck security caravans in this valley than anyplace in the world that comes quickly to mind except Washington, D.C., and Vatican City. There is a lot of available cash in these places, a lot of quasi-secret money changing hands . . . of governments being toppled on the other side of the world, of kingdoms being undermined, and whole families of U.S. presidents and movie stars like Julia Roberts and Harry Dean Stanton being bought and sold and coddled like concubines, by criminal scum like Neil Bush, convicted crook and brother of our sitting president George W. . . . Not to mention the current Secretary of the (U.S.) Army and gilded clutch of criminally fugitive executives from ENRON, including the monstrous chairman Kenneth Lay. . . . These people roam free and unmolested in Aspen, cloistered by off-duty cops and Hollywood yo-yos and bimbos and suckfish. . . . I know these people. They are more and more my neighbors in these first horrible years of our new Century. . . .

  . . .

  There is never any shortage of applicants for paid-police jobs in the Roaring Fork Valley. All ambitious young cops want to be hired in places like Palm Beach and Sausalito and Aspen. They crave their 15 minutes of fame, and their police research has told them that Aspen is the most likely place to get it. . . .

  . . .

  Which is normal enough in this town. It has long been a haven for sybaritic outlaws and other social criminals as long as they had a good story and didn’t hurt the neighbors—not quite a sanctuary, but at least a sort of retro-legal gray area, where real-life words like Crime and Guilt mean different things to different people, even in the same household.

  Kiss, Kiss

  “Hey baby, you want to come over here and swim naked with me?”

  “Say what?”

  “You know what I mean, sweetie. I want to dance on the head of your pin. How about it?”

  “Oh my God, you crazy bitch! I should have killed you a long time ago.”

  “You’re lying,” she said. “Come here and smoke a marijuana cigarette with me.” She dropped her thin little robe and raised her perfect arms above her shoulders, whipping her hair down and behind her until it touched the top of her thighs. “I am Xania,” she said, “Goddess of Wind and Pussy.”

  I was stunned. It was hard to believe that this girl was only eight years old. She appeared to be twice that age.

  “I find you extremely beautiful,” I said to her. “I must be going crazy.”

  She laughed and danced out of my reach. I was drinking heavily that night and my thumb had been recently broken in a car accident. The pain was relentless. It flashed up my arm like a bolt of hot lightning, from my lifeline to my armpit, so I couldn’t touch the girl or even kiss her without pain.

  Who was this wild little floozy? And why me? I may be a teenage girl trapped in the body of an elderly dope fiend. . . . But that doesn’t make me a pervert. “Don’t worry,” I told her. “I don’t want to penetrate you, my dear—I just want to suck on your back.”

  She shuddered, seeming to glisten in the thin light of this California dawn. . . .

  . . .

  People are talking about O. J. Simpson on TV today. They want to see reruns of his Trial on daytime TV. Yes. Eighty-eight percent of adults who responded to this Poll were strongly in favor of CBS broadcasting uncut tapes of the Trial of O. J. Simpson on worldwide TV.

  Eighty-eight percent is also the number of Americans who allegedly favor the continued presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and the Death Penalty for all foreigners accused of “terrorism.” They are Patriotic Americans who like to kill. Just like yourself, Doc. So what? They love their country.

  Sure they do, Bubba. We’ll see how much they love their goddamn country when they get busted for smoking a joint in Public—or even in Private, if Bush has his way. They will find themselves cuffed in a Federal courtroom on felony charges of Conspiracy to Kill a Judge. Ho ho. How do you like your Security blanket now, dude? We will kill the ones who eat us, and eat the ones we kill. Onward Christian Soldiers. Mahalo.

  I was brooding on these things while I struggled to understand what horrible god would put me face to face with this naked child in my own home, with no warning, on this peaceful Saturday morning when all I wanted to do was watch a basketball game. It was wrong, deeply wrong.

  Fuck those people. I’ve had a bellyful of those vengeful Christian bastards and their Rules for righteous punishment. What would the Pope have me do with this human sex doll that I have on my hands?

  Fuck the Pope. He is a Pervert like all the others. Those fruit-bags have had their way for 2,000 years, and look what we have to show for it. Boom boom. Sorry honey, but that money you had in the bank just went bye-bye. Our horse failed to finish. Earnings were insufficient. You will suffer huge tax penalties, on top of everything else. Didn’t I tell you that the End of the World (as we know it) will happen in the summer of 2012? That is what my people tell me, and I have no reason to doubt it.

  Get a grip on yourself, Doc. Do you really want to suck on that little girl’s back?

  Why not? I thought. I have loved and admired the female spine for many years, beginning with Sally down in Mobile. The Spine is far and away the most beautiful bone in the human body. Does The Church have a problem with me wanting to suck on a human back? Nonsense. Get over it, Father—just tell me how much it will cost. . . . I am a gentle man, but some things make me weird, and this is one of them.

  Ah, but no more of that mushy stuff, eh? We are soldiers and we don’t need it. A love of this nature is dangerous, but only if it gets out of control. That would be Wrong, as they say in the Vatican—perhaps borderline evil. Would the Pope have me killed for sucking on a beautiful human spine, a creature born of God?

  Well . . . Yes, in a word, he would. We live in kinky times, but maybe not quite that kinky. There is some shit those perverts won’t eat.

  (Mike McAllister)

  The War on Fat

  Hot damn! It is summer again in America, and the goofy Child President has declared his long-overdue War on Fat. The nation is plunged, once again, into another life-or-death WAR against the forces of Evil. Wonderful. Let’s get it over with. We are Patriotic people, but there is some shit we won’t eat. . . . It is one thing to be trampled like scum by our own Military Police, and quite a goddamn other to be wallowed and stomped on by Fat People.

  I have seen a lot of horrible wars in my time, folks, but I tell you this desperate War on Fat is going to be like a terminal Sewer fire in Miami. It is unthinkable. These greasy, blubbery bastards will be huge favorites to conquer and dominate us. The summer book odds are hovering around 9-1 & climbing. The spectre of doom by Fat is right in front of our eyes.

  My weird neighbor, Omar, has about 4 percent fat on his body—extremely lean meat, in a word, and more & more likely to activate the body-screecher a
t any self-respecting International Airport—Hey man, you’re not Fat enough to be boarded on this airplane. I’ll kill you with an axe if you come any further. . . .

  Mark Twain would love this story: “Let me get this straight, Boss—are you telling me to Okay fat people and arrest the skinny ones? Jesus. Please, Boss, don’t make me do this. Fat people are horrible to touch. I can’t stand it.”

  And meanwhile the President is poking us day and night to “shrug off yr. sorrows and come out to run with me.” Run, run, run like a bastard and never look back. . . . Wow. That is very strange thinking, eh? Forget thinking, just JOG and get over it.

  I’ll bet Tonya Harding said that. She is a sassy little creature, for sure. . . . There is talk that the monumentally lewd O’Farrell Theatre in San Francisco will make her the headliner in their new outdoor Erotic Boxing spectacles this summer. Jim Mitchell knows Talent when he sees it. I will be at ringside when Tonya opens against Charlotte Rampling in July. Call Jeff Armstrong for media certification. Mahalo.

  (Ralph Steadman)

  Welcome to the Fourth Reich

  This may be the Generation that will have to face the End

  of the World.

  —U.S. President Ronald Reagan, Xmas, 1985

  SIMON

  Editor

  The London Independent

  Dear Simon,

  Millions of people around the world are watching the headlines these days, and most of them are getting the Fear. Good news is out of the question in this brutal year of our Lord 2002. This is the time of the Final Shit Rain, as Nostradamus predicted in 1444 A.D., and anybody who thinks he was kidding should strut out purposefully, like some all-American girl with a head full of Mandrax, and try to get a job in this country. . . . Yes sir, little sweetie, just walk right up here and get what’s coming to you. Ho ho ho.

  There are no jobs in America, Simon; the job market collapsed in 2001 A.D., along with the stock market and all ENRON pension funds. All markets collapsed about 3 days after George W. Bush moved into the White House. . . . Yeah, it was that fast. BOOM, presto, welcome to bombs and poverty. You are about to start paying for the sins of your fathers and forefathers, even if they were innocent.

  We are in bad trouble over here, Simon. The deal is going down all over the once-proud U.S.A. We are down to our last cannonball(s). Stand back! Those Pentagon swine are frantic to kick some ass, and many job opportunities are opening up in the Armaments, Surveillance, and New Age Security industries.

  Hell, did I forget to mention those jobs? How silly of me. There is always a bull market for vengeance and violence in America, and on some days I have been part of it. You bet. In my wild and dangerous youth I wanted to be a dashing jet pilot, a smiling beast who zooms across the sky doing victory rolls and monster sonic booms just over the beach in Laguna. Hot damn, Simon, I could walk on water in those days. I had a license to kill.

  I have been a news addict all my life, and I feel pretty comfortable with my addiction. It has been good to me, although not necessarily for me, or my overall comfort level. Being a news junkie has taken me down some very queer roads, and into the valley of death a few times—not always for strictly professional reasons, alas—but those things do come with the territory, and you want to understand this: It is the key to survival in my business, as it is in many others.

  And you definitely want to have a shockproof sense of humor, which is hard to learn in school and even harder to teach. (It is also an irritating phrase to keep putting on paper over and over—so from now on we will use the ancient and honorable word “WA,” instead of “Sense of humor.” It will smooth out our word-rhythms, and we can move along more briskly.)

  Okay. We were talking about the news—information or intelligence gleaned from afar, etc., etc.

  The news is bad today, in America and for America. There is nothing good or hopeful about it—except for Nazis, warmongers, and rich greedheads—and it is getting worse and worse in logarithmic progressions since the fateful bombing of the World Trade Towers in New York. That will always be a festering low-watermark in this nation’s violent history, but it was not the official birthday of the end of the American Century.

  No. That occurred on the night of the presidential election in the year 2000, when the nexus of power in this country shifted from Washington, D.C., to “the ranch” in Crawford, Texas. The most disastrous day in American history was November 7, 2000. That was when the takeover happened, when the generals and cops and right-wing Jesus freaks seized control of the White House, the U.S. Treasury, and our Law Enforcement machinery.

  So long to all that, eh? “Nothing will ever be the same again,” the whorish new President said at the time. “As of now we are in the grip of a National Security Emergency that will last for the rest of our lives.”

  Fuck you, I quit. Mahalo.

  I would never claim to speak for my whole nation, Simon; I am not the Voice of America—but neither am I a vicious machine-gun Nazi warmonger with blood on my hands and hate in my heart for every human being in the world who is not entirely white—and, if you wonder why I mention this thuggish characterization, understand that I am only responding to it in this way because my old friend, the weird artist Ralph Steadman, is saying these horrible things about me in England, Wales, and Kent—and directly to me, in fact, when we speak on the trans-Atlantic telephone.

  “That is bullshit, Ralph,” I tell him. “Are you getting senile? Do you know who you are talking to?”

  “Of course I do,” he replies. “You are the same brutal redneck I’ve known all my life—except that now you are turning into what you always were from the start—just another murderous American. . . .”

  So that is how this thing got jump-started, Simon. And ever since (I think) I talked to you on yr. birthday I have been feverishly writing down my various fears and worries and profoundly angst-ridden visions about our immediate future.

  So good luck, Simon. Pls advise me at once in re: yr. space & rates. How about $20,000, eh? I can ramble on for many hours about my recent experience as an American in these days at the end of our Century. Or maybe just 1,000 words, or 2,000. Think about it, and R.S.V.P. soonest. Thanx,

  HUNTER

  May 10, 2002

  Amor Vincit Omnia

  He not busy being born is busy dying.

  —Bob Dylan

  The White Helicopter

  She flew low over central Paris—the Dream of the Princess in the White Helicopter.

  Took lessons for months—very difficult; you can’t hire many people who could fly a chopper in low over downtown Paris and park it in midair above a prison long enough to send a man down a line with an Uzi and come back up . . .

  Then put it down on the roof of the prison and carry her lover off on the skid—and then to put the thing down in a nearby parking lot and have everything organized so finely that they disappeared instantly in the waiting car.

  Perfect. Nadine, you can have a job with me anytime. This may be a love story. . . .

  . . .

  There were other things happening in the news last week—mainly politics, but we need a break from that now.

  There was, in fact, this truly elegant little tale that came out of Paris, and it was about The Girl in the White Helicopter who rescued her lover from prison. It was one of those fine little love stories that can make you smile in your sleep at night.

  The real action last week was in Romance & full-on madness . . .

  The wife of French bank robber Michel Vaujour flew low over central Paris in a white helicopter and hovered over the roof of La Santé prison. A man armed with a submachine gun slid down a line to the roof . . . Vaujour, wearing a blue and red warm-up suit, was hidden from guards behind a chimney. He grabbed one of the chopper’s landing skids and climbed aboard. The gunman leaped in after him, and the copter whisked them to a nearby soccer field, where all three disappeared . . . Nadine Vaujour, the robber’s wife, had been taking copter-flying lessons for many months,
French authorities learned later.

  Even a dumb brute could fall in love with a story like that. It has the purity of a myth and the power of being simple flat-out true, and it spoke to our highest instincts. It was a perfect crime, done for love, and it was carried out with awesome precision and a truly crazy kind of fearlessness by a beautiful girl in a white helicopter.

  There is more to the story, of course. That perfect escape was last May, and the honeymoon lasted all summer. But in the autumn Michel went back to work, and a New York Times dispatch out of Paris in late September said he’d been “seriously wounded and captured in a shootout while trying to rob a bank.” He had been shot in the head and was lying in a coma at the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital.

  “Officials said Mr. Vaujour’s wife, who masterminded the May escape, was arrested Saturday morning at a hideout in southwestern France.”

  When I read it I felt a chill. All the real love stories end wrong, and I was just about to close the file on this one . . .

  “Mrs. Vaujour was already well known to police,” said an earlier Times item. “She and Mr. Vaujour were married in 1979 while he was in a different jail serving a previous sentence. (He was moved frequently to prevent an escape.) They had a daughter, who was born in jail in September 1981, while Mrs. Vaujour was being held in preventive detention.”

  I was struck by the almost unholy power and purity of the Vaujours’ love for each other, which ran through their lives like a red thread. Above all else, they were lovers, and they honored the word by the terrible intensity they brought to it.