Visions - In my Minds Eye., ARTHUR HOWE [good beach reads .TXT] 📗

It hasn’t stopped my Visions. It hasn't stopped my screaming and sobbing.

Over the years, since that very first Vision, I’ve seen it all.

Murders, rapes, suicides, car smashes, plane crashes, drownings, muggings, shootings, knifings, burglaries, overdoses, people jumping off buildings, bridges, mountains.

People dying in just about every way you could ever think possible.

I’ve seen planes crashing into buildings, buses, and trains blown to smithereens, kids with guns shooting other kids. People burning, people freezing, people disintegrating right before my very eyes.

My visions have never been wrong. Just the timing differs. Sometimes the events take place days after my vision, other times, weeks, even months. Sometimes, like now, I wait anxiously for confirmation of yet another tragedy.

People have called me “gifted.” They’ve described my visions as “wondrous.” They’ve even likened me to a “Modern day Nostradamus.”

The torment is huge. The pain enormous. The frustration, more than I can handle.

Why am I telling you all this, you may wonder?

Because I’ve seen the end.

The end of Man and of Life as we know it.

How does it come about? Let me tell you of my Vision or should I say, Visions.

Sometimes, I get just one vision and that’s that. Other times, I get small snippets, which patch together to make up a bigger picture.

I must say here, that this is my summary of a series of visions. Each of the scenes, I describe, I have seen in real, live colour, playing out right before my eyes.

I closed my eyes to see nothing except a blur, a streak, like a paintbrush stroke, slightly rounded at one end. First one man, then many men and women, all with telescopes sitting on tripods, are lined up next to a stone wall. The sun seems to be setting and they focus their scopes on this blur. I realise that this is a comet and judging by the animated talk, the sketches changing hands and the smiles all round, this is a new phenomena. This is a one-off, unexpected phenomena. The newsprint splashes it across the headlines, “ Previously Unknown Comet Paints the Western Skies.”

The next scene that plays out is a high speed, fast forward collage of scenes, a particularly resistant virus designed as a tactical weapon, is accidentally released by the creators of the virus, causing panic among the Population, leading to the Military lockdown of millions. International travel ensures that the virus reaches all corners of the earth and no one is spared by  wealth or social status. Cities and Nations come to a halt. Cities become Ghost Towns. Countries become Ghost Countries. Stock Markets crash wiping trillions off the economies.

Famines, droughts, social upheavals around the World, cities desolated and evacuated by those seeking the safety of the unknown.

Civil strife, rioting, political turmoil as Governments collapse under the burden of a financial collapse and a demolished infrastructure.

The flashing of torn and shredded Stars and Stripes litters my visions. America is decimated, the nation is flattened from end to end. The scenes are of conflict, despair, and total misery.

My minds camera flashes on famous, big-screen icons, reduced to rags, torn and bleeding, dying in the cracked and broken streets.

The US is bankrupted attempting to deal with its disasters whilst fighting power-wars all over the world.

During all these visions, a "young, short, dark complexioned man" appears often, smiling. In Trafalgar Square, bearded protesters carry banners that warn of the coming of the Antichrist.

This man, reveals himself as the leader of a country who has been able to obtain nuclear weapons. Their neighbours, fearing a lack of support from the U.S.A, pre-empt his attacks with a nuclear weapon.

One of the bombs mushrooms in the Mediterranean Sea, and devastates marine life which I see floating on the surface. Passage through the region is now impossible. People are so cut off and desperate for food that they eat the fish anyway. All this happens near the east coast of the Mediterranean where I see large stretches of dark-coloured cliffs.

Another nuclear weapon is dropped by one of the Middle Eastern countries and sparks off yet another war, on top of that war.

European nations spurred on by the American Government, try to interfere to diminish the threat to oil supplies. When the European countries try to interfere, this "young, short, dark complexioned man" uses the rest of his arsenal on Europe, most of them striking the Italian Peninsula.

The European Mediterranean coast, particularly that of Italy and France, becomes almost uninhabitable, and Italy is wiped out.

In central Europe, southern Europe, and in the Middle East, around the eastern end of the Mediterranean, there are massive and severe floods. As a result of the disruption to local governments by the natural disasters and the nuclear fall out, this "young, short, dark complexioned man" moves his troops in under the guise of helping the people restore civil order, but really uses this as a device to take over countries, and to use the populations like slaves.

Serious economic problems persist along with great social unrest, contributing to the ease with which the "young, short, dark complexioned man" can seize power.

Martial law is declared in most countries to stop rioting and looting. The Middle East, the source of his power, is not as devastated as the rest of the world. He offers assistance to other countries trying to recover but only to eventually stab them in the back.

Through a breakdown in global communications, U.K. and European troops involved in “War Games,” whilst trying to restore order to Europe, cause a "real-world" situation to play out instead of a simulation. As a result of the error, actual nuclear defences are activated and real bombs are seen mushrooming on Europe, the U.K and the U.S.A. with final, tragic consequences.

The big Nuclear winter has begun.

And that will be the end of life as we have known it.

My latest visions show me only pain, suffering, and a slow painful extinction of man.

That is something I can not face myself.

But who can I talk to? Who will listen to the ravings of a loony like me who says, “I saw it in my minds eye, In one of my Visions?”

I’m stepping out now. The quick, easy, cowards-way perhaps, but for me, one that makes me feel as if I still have some control.

By the time you read this, I’ll be dead. Gone.

Hopefully, someone will heed my warnings and try to prevent the inevitable.

The only problem is that, until now, I’ve never been wrong.

“In some local news today, An unidentified Man wearing Pyjamas under his overcoat and carrying a black leather briefcase threw himself in front of an express train travelling between Newcastle and London, killing himself instantly.

Witnesses say that the Man, in his thirties, stood at the edge of the platform, smiling to himself and dropped his briefcase seconds before throwing himself into the path of the oncoming train. Police are investigating the contents of the briefcase, looking for clues as to the Man’s Identity. Other witnesses say that the Man may have escaped from the Mortonlee Sanatorium prior to the incident.

In International news today, Observers at the Sutherland Observatory in South Africa have spotted what appears to be a previously unknown Comet which they say should be visible to the naked eye in the Western skies towards the end of January 2007.

This new comet was only discoveredin August 2006 by RH McNaught and will be know as "Comet McNaught". Although the Comet will be deemed a “Near-miss”, the Scientists say that the Comet’s path will take it many millions of Miles from planet earth where it will pose no real danger and have no effect on other celestial bodies…………..”

THE FART

I know that for every one of you that has actually started to read this story, there are probably two or three who, on seeing the title, turned up their noses, sneered and muttered something about “disgusting” or “sick” before discarding the read altogether in favour of some more tasteful title.

The fact is, everybody farts. Everybody, no exceptions, no exclusions, no individual, or group that’s divinely pardoned. In my (possibly sick) little mind, I often get a slight sense of amusement in the back of my mind watching T.V. and seeing all the Celebrity “We Don’t Fart’s,” or so we’re expected to believe. I watch programs like the Oscars and wonder to myself, how many of the celeb’s present are dying to let one go, or have sneaked one out in the car, or even as they’re walking down the aisle to receive their golden statue?

Everyone farts. The Queen, the Pope, George Bush, Tony Blair, Princess Caroline, Nelson Mandela, Kylie Mynogue and even that gorgeous bird who reads the news on Sky T.V., they all fart, believe me. If God were around, he’d fart.

It’s part of nature, part of the natural process of taking in foods and drinks and, depending on the content, the body builds up excess gases which have to be expelled somehow. Either they’re expelled as a good solid belch, or, if they’ve gone further down the digestion process, they end up as a fart.

A friend of mine once said that the best way to see if you were going to be compatible with your future life partner was to “get on farting terms” with him/her. Do it before you get married, he said as you never can tell what’s going to happen once that first wind is broken. My Mother believes that a person should “go to the toilet” if they want to fart. Either that, or go out into the garden and let rip so no one has to suffer except the neighbours. For me, this would mean having to stop, mid-fart and say, “whoops, I feel a fart coming on”, get up from my seat and walk all the way upstairs to the bathroom where I would undo my belt, drop my pants and underpants, sit myself down comfortably and then let off that three second blast. All this, in a vague effort to hide the fact that nature told me to let-rip, let go, baff, shed my load, call it what you want but the bottom line is a fart is still, a fart.

Farts are not regulated by any sort of timing mechanism, no lunar clock or gravitational forces can allow you to predict when it’s going to happen. The bottom line is that sometimes you can hold it back and let it go in some more private setting and that other times, you just have to let go.

Which brings me to my story and to the sorry tale of ”the little fart that shouldn’t have”.

Now I mentioned the fact that the amount of gas you expel, depends a lot on the type of food and drink you put into your system. Certain foods are reputed to produce more gas and others less. Beans for instance, are reputed to make a lot of gas. Similarly, certain gassy drinks like beers or fizzy cold drinks can make the body produce more than its fair share of gas. Certain combinations of these foods can take 1 plus 1 and make it 3. A good Chilli-con-carne washed down with a couple of Newcastle Brown’s can make an explosive chamber of gases, deadly to all within the wind’s direction and certainly not one to win friends or influence people.

Which was exactly the combination of foods and drinks I’d had the on the Sunday night before.

Just to give you a little bit of background to this story; I work on the ninth floor of a grey and boring little building in Central Cape Town and am busy doing my articles with a grey and boring firm of Chartered Accountants who would sneer at the fact that I’m even writing this story, after all, and I forgot to mention, Chartered Accountants don’t fart. They can’t fart. They’re too damned neat, clean, and precise to fart,