The Arcturus Man Read Free

no claw sandwiches today. Sevigny died
last month.
There was an acknowledging nod of the head that Ashley gave people she recognized that strangers didn’t get, but that was all.
He was glad that Sevigny‘s kid wasn’t
working today. He didn’t want a conversation and he didn’t like the kid. Moments later
his food was brought over.
He opened his burger to make sure everything was there.
He filled a little paper
cup with hot barbecue sauce.
He picked up the bottle of Louisiana Hot Sauce and made
the dip even hotter.
He liked to dip his fries.
It tasted like the catsup his mother made
when he was a boy. He liked capsaicin.
“ More chemistry ,” he thought. His mind was spinning again. “ Analysis is paralysis ,” he thought. He had to clear his head. He had to stop analyzing every minute of the
day. The Black Dog was waiting for him.
What would that boy think of the man? He cleared his mind. He wasn't going to
think. He wasn’t going to let it happen again, or at least not that way. Not that it mattered
all that much.
Carefully, he organized his table. Each part of his meal had a special place on the
table. Eating the meal had a fixed sequence. He didn't think of it as a ritual. As far as he
was concerned, it was merely the right way to process the eating of lunch.
Jared took a large bite out of the cheeseburger.
His mind was always churning.
He couldn’t stop it although he tried to constantly.
The meat he was eating had been
grazing in some pasture not so long ago and he was now consuming what had been vibrant living flesh. Death is never a painless process.
He thought about the arrogance of
vegetarians. All humans eat things that had been living in order to survive. It was natural
and necessary.
The superciliousness of human plant eaters was contemptible.
Animals
and plants are living things. Who is to say that one form of life is less important? Because
humans are animals, Jared supposed it was understandable that forms of life that were
different, that are not animals, would be dismissed as being unimportant. Plants are alive
and possess the same secret of life.
Plants are sentient living organisms in their own
manner. That plants feel and, perhaps, communicate is of consequence. That humans are
unable and uninterested in empathizing or understanding their world is supreme arrogance. Theirs is a world of pure chemistry. Purer than ours.
He thought about what he was eating.
Jared felt no guilt when consuming either
plant or animal. It was the natural order of things. Humans had cutting canines as well as
grinding molars. People are eaters of flesh and vegetation. Humans are also the eaters of
the young and the foods intended for infants, but rarely consider that.
People consume
eggs, seeds, nuts, milk, veal, and suckling pigs. There was no sin in that but to claim that
vegetarianism was the right path because it didn’t depend on inflicting pain and cruelty
for sustenance, was ignorant and reflected human conceit.
Jared took another bite and pulled back the curtain next to his table. Someone was
watching him. He felt him.
It may be another nameless man, but the danger wasn’t imminent. Jared ignored him and finished his meal.
The watcher could barely see Jared through the dirty window. It was exhausting
to watch his quarry without looking directly at him or thinking about him. Not thinking
about him was particularly difficult and tiring. The sun glare made it worse. Smolenskiy
could walk into the café and before anyone would even notice that he entered, he could
shoot him in the head. It would happen so casually and so quickly, his prey would be defenseless. Smolenskiy’s Slavic appearance was not common, but it was a virtual certainty
that descriptions to the police and the resulting sketch artist renderings of him would be
worthless. It would be simple and it would be over.
Obviously, the bureaucrats in the
Kremlin, or whatever they named it this week, could not understand anything simple. He
especially