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Lenin And *That* Locomotive Of History
That particular locomotive, Comrade, is powered by
steam that is water (yes, ordinary water) heated by
Hell's own firebox. And, in the style of the silent
films so popular among the American capitalists.
proprietary classes, and conspicuous consumers
(they will call that era, the Roaring Twenties after
all), you are bound to the rails, bound by sturdy
ropes manufactured in one of the many factories
(gray steel shells erected on colorless slabs of
concrete), manufactured by the happy and contented
proletariat whose dictatorship (under your rather
bloodthirsty direction---pretty good for a failed lawyer,
what?) has established the unassailable Workers'
Paradise upon the contours of the Motherland,
turning palaces into administrative offices and
cathedrals of the Orthodox Church into public
lavatories. So you are bound to the rails (these had
been refurbished by the Czar some years before
you ordered the brutal murders of him and all of
his family, including the beautiful and sometimes
barefoot Alexei), and you can already feel the
vibration before you hear the whistle blasts and the
valves chuffing steam; before you see that blinding
light focusing upon you (this one is far more
formidable, far more efficient, than anything that
Kolomensky Zavod has designed), and when it
bears down upon you, your limbs will be twisted and
broken by the thrusting rods, as the driving wheels
sever and crush your bulbous, bald head. The rushing
draft will sweep the pieces of you up and into the
firebox, which is, as I have noted above, the firebox of
hell; and each of these fragments of you will feel the
searing agony of hellfire in there, until the locomotive
itself has had enough of you . . . and spits you out,
intact and again trussed up . . . ready for another
run, right on schedule. This is your eternity, Comrade
Lenin: this was the vision vouchafed to you on that
night in Gorki---so horrific that even your malevolent
brain could not bear the shock and shorted out to a
coma, and then extinguished whatever was left of the
vital spark in your flesh.
Starward
[*/+/^]
