ODE TO MORDICAI JONES

“Taught me erythin’ I know ‘bout gettin’ rich.”

When Eflim waxed nostalgic about the role model he took from George C. Scott’s character in a movie about the sporting life to be had on the fringes of society, his eyes glazed over as they gazed off at the castles in the sky he’d learned to construct for his marks.

He’d always considered himself a mere humble practitioner of the snake oil arts, like any number of salesmen, lawyers and politicians, until he watched a breakthrough television dramatization of a character he took to be his new role model, a serial killer who restricted his victims to serial killers by circumventing any restrictions on their legal pursuit, capture, trial and execution by the police force for which his overt occupation is a blood spatter analyst. Imagine that.

He changed his name from Tolliver Dolittle to Eflim Flame, charged a new suit to the credit card of someone who’d never notice anything larger than $10K on her statements and began making a priority list of the most destructive liars on the planet upon whom to wreak his dastardly deeds. His research quickly uncovered the prior existence of an organization of people with the same idea who had already begun perverting carefully orchestrated public relation lies to publicize the truth intended to be hidden. They call themselves the Yesmen. He joined them.

Ridicule can shake mountains built by confidence men. Like earthquake victims learn, it is not the quake that kills it is the castles one builds in the sky that crumble when faith in liars is shaken. Without liars, would faith ever be a requirement for anything?

These days Eflim is retired from dealing with anything that can be lied about. What lies can you tell a chicken to get more eggs or a garden to get juicier tomatoes or a friend to gain more love for who you actually are?

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This thinly veiled fiction employed the literary style I found used extensively by Stephen King, which is to reference previous dramatizations rather than indulge in the descriptive creativity of one’s own, which I find for the purposes of blogging suits the goal of keeping it short. At the same time I realize I have lost people unfamiliar with my references just as Stephen loses me referencing scenes from movies I haven’t seen. It’s the compromise of using pop jargon to express classic problems just to get the most pop oriented out of the rat race long enough to think about more than the next hustle.