Frankenstein’s Little Lambs
The creature, which he had hoped would be beautiful, is instead hideous to his eyes, with a withered, translucent, yellowish skin that barely conceals the muscular system and blood vessels. After giving the monster life, Frankenstein is repulsed by his work: "I had desired it with an ardor that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” Frankenstein flees hoping to forget what he has created and attempts to live a normal life. Victor's abandonment of the monster leaves the monster confused, angry and afraid.
-Dr Frankenstein’s words from the novel by Mary Shelley-
The book is a fiction, but all good fiction tends to reveal men’s hearts and bare the soul.
The current trend of “Big Christianity” as in “Big Oil” or “Big Tobacco” seems to be creating an deviant strain of Christian, not much different than Frankenstein’s monster. Emaciated, tasteless, weak and very strange, scaring the bejesus out of most ordinary people, if there are such a thing.
And us who are a part of this huge empire and engine that I choose to call “Big Christianity” are despised, feared and thrown out without a wink by almost everybody that feels like they have been pressured, influenced or used by this big corporate engine.
You don’t have to look far to find the victims of Big Christianity, wounded Christians that love Christ with all their heart, never daring to darken or perhaps actually lighten the doorstep of the church again. The late Dr Martin Luther King once preached a sermon called the “Knock at Midnight” with a main thought that many people were knocking on the door of the church and either getting no answer or becoming utterly confused when they were turned away or left hungry after so many attempts at extracting real life from this huge edifice.
Martin Luther King’s words in his sermon “A Knock at Midnight” still bear a striking resemblance to our current church history.
We must not be tempted to confuse spiritual power and large numbers. Jumboism,(my word was “Big Christianity”) as someone has called it, is an utterly fallacious standard for measuring positive power. An increase in quantity does not automatically bring an increase in quality. A larger membership does not necessarily represent a correspondingly increased commitment to Christ. …But although a numerical growth in church membership does not necessarily reflect a concomitant increase in ethical commitment, millions of people do feel that the church provides an answer to the deep confusion that encompasses their lives. It is still the one familiar landmark where the weary traveler by midnight comes. It is the one house which stands where it has always stood, the house to which the man travelling at midnight either comes or refuses to come. Some decide not to come. But the many who come and knock are desperately seeking a little bread to tide them over…..
At midnight this type of church has neither the vitality nor the relevant gospel to feed hungry souls. ….Many men continue to knock on the door of the church at midnight, even after the church has so bitterly disappointed them, because they know the bread of life is there.
How many of us, like Dr Frankenstein, are horrified to find that our dreams of a beautiful bride, our noble visions of transformed lives and our answer to the great commission have merely produced the Frankenstein Sheep of Big Christianity? Much like a forged painting, or a copy of a copy, it just doesn’t seem to have the true soul of the original dream. In it’s place some deviant strain of rabid consumers of religion, sermons and songs, grow fat on eloquent speakers and the next singing sensation.
Instead of Christ’s disciples, we become more akin to Frankenstein’s monster.
The current trend of Big Christianity, bigger shows, bigger churches, bigger bibles, bigger TV names and preachers all smacks of a monstrous aberration of early church history that is recorded in the Book of Acts and Gospels of Christ. Proving once again that men are sinners, depraved and wicked, and left to ourselves we will turn into some kind of hideous monster. C.S. Lewis said that we are all moving toward one of two destinies: immortal splendor or immortal horror.
I do not mean everyone is living in obvious flagrant sin and perversion, but perhaps a titanic Golden Calf is being created out of the huge engine of Big Christianity.
If you have taken the time and energy to have a profound and deep relationship with God in Christ, and you then take a good long look at the huge structure being built around North American Christianity, you must come to a similar conclusion as I do, that something is very wrong with Big Christianity. I believe it is far from the holiness that Lord called us to. Oh, it looks good, and has produced some stellar people but holiness is more than skin and actions.
Just take a look around most churches and you will see the white-washed gleaming smiles of people afraid to say they had a bad day. Thinking that to do so would be a shame on the God who is perfectly able to defend His own reputation and is in fact so secure in His own Holiness that He needs no defense. People choosing rather to hide their pain and sorrow under a gauze of nice fat study bibles, study programs and assorted other programs smacks of the unholy as assuredly as the next pagan on the street. Their own bible says They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly. 2 Tim 3:5 (NLT)
Not at all rejecting God, and fully believing the tenets and doctrines that they are taught and hold dear. Hungry for more religion and church, they wander from feeding trough to feeding trough and in true American Style they become obese and unhealthy choosing to fill their lives with whatever they can get at the next buffet. Twisted and broken, many are hearing the glorious promises of God day after day, but never realize a smidgen of what’s said. Beginning to sour and feeling trapped inside, fearing to flee, they stay put and go round and round hoping for a change that never comes. For some there is one last desperate cry for some sermon to fix them, before they run out the door, never to be seen again, morphing at last into little lost lambs.
Frankenstein’s sheep wander into the barn on Sunday, latte in hand, bible under their arm and wander out after hearing a sermon by yet another sheep who has slaved, prayed and sought God; hoping that at least one of these monstrous sheep would grasp the idea of true holiness, true depth of relationship with the Living God. Alas, too many just stare at the preacher and gobble up tidbits, treating it all like junk food and snacks.
No wonder Jesus used sheep as a metaphor for us people. We fill ourselves with the best choice morsels filling our lives with DVDs, concerts and the latest miracle worker, and going out into the world nice polished little lambs really changed but a little. But does the lamb ever become a ram or does it reproduce? Does it seek the injunctions of Christ to be holy for He is holy? Is He the center and the reason for our being? Or is that just a doctrine we’ve learned? Are our wills being bent to breaking to see His will and purpose in our life?
I believe true holiness is a gut wrenching search for the God in Christ. A never-ending quest for a deep-seated holiness in Christ. The scripture says that He dwells in the High and the Holy place “with him” who has a contrite and humble spirit, in order to, revive the spirit and the heart Isaiah 57:15.
How does that square with coffee cups, bumper stickers and the masses of money that are spent on meager reminders that God just barely exists? Those truly must be the sacraments of Big Christianity. Is the High and the Lofty One really pleased with our sacrifices to cash registers and the internet for the latest Christian trinket that proves we are His?
As a Pastor of a gloriously small church and a person who talks to people on the street most everyday, I am confronted with this fact; that many people have come to the church of “Big Christianity” and left either bitterly disappointed or more wounded than when they came, vowing to never knock on that door again. Many, if not most of the people I meet are more than willing to engage in a conversation about Christ and God. many, if not most, feel that Jesus has answers for their problems. But, they have been so tainted by their experience in this or that church, that they can’t even be dragged kicking and screaming into a good local church.
Their experiences are as varied as the unique creations they are. They have not been pretty enough, dressed right, nor had the social correctness and proper behavior to be deemed a welcome addition to the window dressing of the congregation. It is never really said, but the message is loud and clear. The sign outside says all are welcome, but the loudest message is on the faces of the congregants. “You’ll ruin the view”. I have been in churches where it was hard to find a less than beautiful person, and at the very least the members of the worship team were all gorgeous.
I’ve heard it said that there are seemingly more numbers of “beautiful” people in Southern California; and the reason is that in the early days of Hollywood “good-looking” people came to Hollywood seeking their fortune, most failed, but they stayed and met other “good-looking” people and produced “good-looking” kids. Perhaps this is what happens in some churches, a type of natural selection.
What does that say to the weary and beat up traveler looking for some bread and water for their soul?
I think these wounded sheep are perhaps the beautiful ones, and the ones in the “inner circle”, “the beautiful ones”, “the untouchables” are Frankenstein’s Sheep. Intending to build something beautiful with mere cast off parts, much of the church has morphed into something very hideous and distant from what the True Shepherd intended. I fear that looking so polished and gorgeous has given us a sense of rightness, and all the while we are wondering where the new life that we preach about is really at.
Our kids are all home-schooled and kept away from the evil and corrupting influences of the world. We campaign for the right politicians and dream of a Christian State not much different than what radical Islam does, except we know we are right.
All of this looks good, sounds good and sometimes even feels good, but we have turned into Frankenstein’s Sheep instead of Christ’s. Surely Christ’s sheep are battered and bruised, and a quick reading of the New Testament will show that Christ preferred the company of hookers, pimps and thieves, to the polished act of the bible thumpers of the day.
If we could just take a real look at ourselves, as Paul the Apostle said, “if we would judge ourselves we would not be judged 1 Corinthians 11:31”. Let’s put away our nifty bumper stickers, slick DVD’s and gleaming white teeth. Let’s show a little frailty, knowing that we are but frail creatures subject to a fall at any moment. Perhaps then, we could hear the knock of the wounded and disenfranchised, and together we could eat the Bread of Life and drink the Living Water. Perhaps this would be enough to renovate our souls and the sickening ugliness of “Big Christianity” would come tumbling down like a house of cards, and in it’s place would be a truly beautiful bride and not just the bride of Frankenstein.
The creature, which he had hoped would be beautiful, is instead hideous to his eyes, with a withered, translucent, yellowish skin that barely conceals the muscular system and blood vessels. After giving the monster life, Frankenstein is repulsed by his work: "I had desired it with an ardor that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” Frankenstein flees hoping to forget what he has created and attempts to live a normal life. Victor's abandonment of the monster leaves the monster confused, angry and afraid. -Dr Frankenstein’s words from the novel by Mary Shelley-
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
TAXMAN
TAXMAN
Clyde Smelnick at forty-one years of age still lived with his mother. He despised her since the day he knew she had conspired to keep him with her forever. His mom knew Clyde’s secret, she knew who he really is and what he really does, but no one else knew, and the secret was still well kept.
He didn’t love her, as most sons love even the meanest of mothers, and if there was a shred of love in that wretched woman’s soul for him or anyone, he couldn’t see it. Theirs was a family of convenience. Clyde had the job and his mom had the power, so she sat home, in the same flowered print dress, eating Oreos and watching soaps, day in and day out. Her only excursion on a daily basis was to walk her despicable little Chihuahua that hated Clyde, and Clyde hated it back.
Clyde, with his perpetually runny nose, always wore an always rumpled and out of date plaid shirt. His black horn rim glasses, ever smudged with fingerprints, persistently slid down his face. You would have to look long and hard to find a more harmless and bland looking person than Clyde.
But, looks can be deceiving.
Clyde bent his ear towards the perpetual snickers he heard across the lunch room, storing them away in his perfect memory, saving them for later. Without exception Clyde sat alone, eating his liverwurst or pimento loaf sandwiches with one hard-boiled egg and a carrot stick, add one Oreo on Fridays, just to celebrate. Fridays were the saddest day of the week for Clyde because his greatest and only joy was his job as an auditor with the IRS.
How fitting that Clyde worked at the IRS.
The Internal Revenue Service was established in 1862 with the purpose of funding death and destruction during the Civil War. Originally the tax being a flat 3% on incomes over $800 exempted most wage-earners at the time, leaving the tax burden for only the wealthy. Over time this was turned on its head as the agency began to focus their revenue gathering efforts on the average, struggling working stiff. The IRS developed all kinds of mean and nasty little tricks they called Law, and used these laws very effectively to suck money out of people with even the meagerest of incomes, leaving the richest of society every benefit those same taxes paid for.
IF you were acquainted at all with Clyde the auditor, he registered a zero on the Richter scale, he seemed to have no benefit or liability on the world around him, But, no one had any clue what was really lurking in the heart of this little nerd.
In reality, Clyde was an anti-hero, leaving a wake of destruction and misery behind him wherever he plied his special skill. He went about his business with the exactness of an executioners blade, noose or lethal injection. He feigned sympathy towards his victims while gorging on the life blood of their innocent little lives.
Even his victims had no idea that Clyde was the villain. “How could that harmless looking man do anything? “ were the thoughts of people sitting across from him while he examined their income tax forms.
“We want to make sure you haven’t paid too much.” He would dryly say.
It nearly always turned out the other way. Good, innocent and conscientious people bearing the brunt of the guilt and the luxurious burden of the upper class elite. Telling each person he “examined” that they were selected randomly by the computer that looked for certain red flags on their returns.
“I’m sure it will turn out to be nothing,” He would always say, to keep his victims still while he devoured their life’s savings.
No one, not even his superiors knew the truth. Clyde never took breaks, except for lunch, and always stayed late without pay. Because of this, he was the darling of his superiors, his rate of collection was the highest in all of California.
Clyde had no time for diversions. He spent all his time pouring over clearly conscientious taxpayers records. Clyde only read the newspaper to find victims. When he read a story about a working stiff hero that had saved an old woman from a burning house, he looked both the brave man and the old lady up in his system. He would scrape and scratch until he could find some archaic tax law or reverse loop-hole and use it as an excuse to flag them for an audit.
Clyde was a master at finding a way to make them pay. To himself alone, he called it Clyde’s Tax, taxing them for their goodness. Clyde despised good happy people, for his only happiness was in stealing theirs.
Lying in bed at night staring at the cracked ceiling, he took sickly relish in the pain of these poor folks, knowing they were at home spending countless hours scraping and scratching their records together, trying to avoid “Clyde’s Tax”. Fantasizing about their mounting anxiety and how they would worry themselves sick over the impending audit, Clyde grinned a satisfied grin and peacefully drifted off to sleep.
He took a morbid pride inflicting stress on his victims even days and weeks before they sat across the desk from him on audit day. Little blue haired old ladies, blue collar workers with six kids, even better if one was a special needs child.
“Special needs” he huffed, “I’ll show you who has special needs, Uncle Sam is needy, he’s starting to grow thin from all those tax cuts. I don’t care if you want to deduct that $800 dollar a month medicine your special needs child has. I have a special way of getting that deduction back out of you.”
He loved sapping the enjoyment right out of other people’s lives, knowing that the pain he inflicted would last for months and maybe years.
“Enjoy life, ha! I stopped dreaming about that when I was 15 and mom took my allowance and bought meth with it. Misery is my enjoyment. The most enjoyable day of my life was when that IRS recruiter showed up at his High School. I could be paid real well for inflicting emotional, financial and even physical pain on good innocent people.” Clyde thought reminiscing about that day twenty-four years ago.
Clyde was the first in his class, and if they had honors, Clyde would have been valedictorian. He stayed late, paid for all the extra books to help him pass the tests and he graduated at the very top of his class. He would make all those nice happy people pay for their nice happy lives. “Happy ain’t all it’s cracked up to be anyway,” was his mantra. He became the IRS’s little darling and poster boy for a successful auditor.
The minister and his wife sat in Clyde’s office nervously holding their box of papers. They had sweated and worried for days making sure every scrap of receipt was included and could be back-checked three different ways. All their bank statements with the receipts lined up in order and all their proof of expenses was neatly stacked in a nice wicker basket. They knew that they had done what was right. They never cheated their taxes. They were conscientious to a fault, but that still did not alleviate all the fear.
They sat holding each other’s hand. Little beads of sweat popping out on their foreheads. They glanced at each other with a look of reassurance while Clyde poured through their records.
Sitting across the desk from them rifling through their records, Clyde nodded occasionally and said “Hmmm” a lot. This was all part of his act. Over the years Clyde carefully crafted his art of inducing stress. He knew the exact motions and body language that would induce the highest amount of anxiety into his victims. Like a cat playing with a mouse that he would eventually devour, Clyde played his sadistic game like a master.
He knew exactly what he was looking for. He had planned this ‘hit’ for weeks.
Smuggling their records out of the building late one night, he went over them at home with a fine tooth comb. He knew if he looked hard enough he could always find something wrong with any tax return. He could make the smallest error seem like a felony by applying any one of a number of obscure tax laws to it. The tax code was so immense, no one knew everything that was in it, except, “Tax Man”, Clyde’s secret anti-hero name for himself that no one knew but him.
A modified version of the Batman theme song would run through his head whenever Clyde scored a hit for the IRS, “Taxman nananana! Taxman!” He really was somebody now.
If “they” only knew.
Clyde sat at his desk, salivating over this potential kill. He would rake them over the coals. In the end they would feel like dirt. It wasn’t just the money, it was the righteousness, joy and peace he wanted to steal, kill and destroy. Men feared failure and women wanted security. He attacked and devoured these like a lion on the hunt.
“This could not be happening” Clyde exclaimed silently to himself. As he put all the figures together through his computer, they were getting money back, a lot of money. Clyde took it personal. It may be the governments money but Clyde treated it like his. Clyde wanted pain and suffering from the Minister and his wife. He poured through the numbers again. “No! This cannot be.” He thought. Now the little beads of sweat popped out on his forehead. “Stay calm, don’t give yourself away Taxman.” He went through it the third time and it was almost time for the office to close.
He finally relinquished victory to the minister and his wife. He tried to feign happiness as he told them the ‘good news’. He cringed when they smiled and thanked him profusely for his thoroughness and ‘kindness’. “Can we send a note to your boss, saying how pleasant and thorough you were?” the minister said. Taxman cringed, his cape in tatters. “Yes that would be real nice.” He said.
Unbeknownst to Taxman, someone in the office was listening in. Ashley Meyers the cheerful auditor in the next cubicle had been monitoring his activities since she began working there five years ago. She had even hacked into his secret files. Someone did know his secret.
Ashley, a pretty twenty-something was very conscientious, but her return rate, the money she collected from taxpayers, was lower than anyone’s in the office. Scrupulous in her work and life, she genuinely cared about people, little animals and the environment. This meant that Ashley cared about her clients, as she called them. She worked for them, to see that they got a fair shake, only using the fine-toothed comb on the obvious cheaters. She despised cheaters.
Ashley always greeted Clyde with a smile when she saw him in the hallway or the lunchroom. This made Clyde nervous. She was too good, too happy, and too pretty. She unnerved Clyde, his palms would sweat and his speech stammer when she spoke to him, always in her sweet little voice with just a hint of country south.
The question’s always asked or at least we’ve all wondered, do IRS agents ever get audited?
Yes they do, as Clyde found out when he checked his mail on Saturday. This infuriated Clyde.
“What do they think they’re doing? don’t they know I’m their best agent.”
Clyde’s records were definitely in order. There was none of that scraping, scratching and sweating for him. “Piece of cake” he thought. He called the number and set up an appointment, for two weeks from Monday. He had to take the day off of work to go to a different office than he worked in. While he was waiting for that day to come, Ashley was transferred out of his branch, he was almost as happy as when he assessed huge penalties and back taxes on some innocent little old lady.
“The happy little good girl was gone.” He rejoiced as much as Clyde could.
On the day of his audit, Clyde dialed the same number on the intercom that thousands of other taxpayers had dialed, just to see someone like him, a little sweet hint of country south voice answered and asked him nicely to please wait. He took a seat and waited for a very inconvenient fifteen minutes.
When the buzzer sounded and the door opened, out walked Ashley Meyers and she greeted him warmly, feigning surprise. Now it was Clyde’s turn to sit in the hot seat. Ashley was very thorough examining Clyde’s perfect records. But unknown to Clyde or anyone else, Ashley had caught onto his sadistic little game when she first started working for the IRS. She hated cheaters.
When she caught onto his game, she went into the big computer and adjusted his tax withholding so a little less than what was right got deducted from his paycheck. Only twenty-five bucks a week and Clyde never noticed, never checked and never suspected. But twenty-five bucks a week over five years adds up to six thousand five hundred smackaroos. This was the only slightly dishonest thing she had ever done, but the end justifies the means, right?
With relish in her voice and a sly grin that Clyde didn’t see, she printed the report and turned it for him to see. “What! This couldn’t be.” But, Clyde had never checked his own deductions. Not only did he owe, it looked like he had defrauded the IRS that he so loved working for. There were lots of records of his unauthorized access to the computers and Clyde was charged as a criminal.
Clyde was tried and convicted for his crimes and was sentenced to five years without parole. He served out his term as a dishwasher and janitor at the prison on Bird Island. Clyde, released on the last day of the five years, took a job as a dishwasher in a seedy restaurant on skid row. Mom still held his secret and so did the pretty and cheerful auditor at the IRS.
“Taxman nananana! Taxman!” He really was somebody now.
Clyde Smelnick at forty-one years of age still lived with his mother. He despised her since the day he knew she had conspired to keep him with her forever. His mom knew Clyde’s secret, she knew who he really is and what he really does, but no one else knew, and the secret was still well kept.
He didn’t love her, as most sons love even the meanest of mothers, and if there was a shred of love in that wretched woman’s soul for him or anyone, he couldn’t see it. Theirs was a family of convenience. Clyde had the job and his mom had the power, so she sat home, in the same flowered print dress, eating Oreos and watching soaps, day in and day out. Her only excursion on a daily basis was to walk her despicable little Chihuahua that hated Clyde, and Clyde hated it back.
Clyde, with his perpetually runny nose, always wore an always rumpled and out of date plaid shirt. His black horn rim glasses, ever smudged with fingerprints, persistently slid down his face. You would have to look long and hard to find a more harmless and bland looking person than Clyde.
But, looks can be deceiving.
Clyde bent his ear towards the perpetual snickers he heard across the lunch room, storing them away in his perfect memory, saving them for later. Without exception Clyde sat alone, eating his liverwurst or pimento loaf sandwiches with one hard-boiled egg and a carrot stick, add one Oreo on Fridays, just to celebrate. Fridays were the saddest day of the week for Clyde because his greatest and only joy was his job as an auditor with the IRS.
How fitting that Clyde worked at the IRS.
The Internal Revenue Service was established in 1862 with the purpose of funding death and destruction during the Civil War. Originally the tax being a flat 3% on incomes over $800 exempted most wage-earners at the time, leaving the tax burden for only the wealthy. Over time this was turned on its head as the agency began to focus their revenue gathering efforts on the average, struggling working stiff. The IRS developed all kinds of mean and nasty little tricks they called Law, and used these laws very effectively to suck money out of people with even the meagerest of incomes, leaving the richest of society every benefit those same taxes paid for.
IF you were acquainted at all with Clyde the auditor, he registered a zero on the Richter scale, he seemed to have no benefit or liability on the world around him, But, no one had any clue what was really lurking in the heart of this little nerd.
In reality, Clyde was an anti-hero, leaving a wake of destruction and misery behind him wherever he plied his special skill. He went about his business with the exactness of an executioners blade, noose or lethal injection. He feigned sympathy towards his victims while gorging on the life blood of their innocent little lives.
Even his victims had no idea that Clyde was the villain. “How could that harmless looking man do anything? “ were the thoughts of people sitting across from him while he examined their income tax forms.
“We want to make sure you haven’t paid too much.” He would dryly say.
It nearly always turned out the other way. Good, innocent and conscientious people bearing the brunt of the guilt and the luxurious burden of the upper class elite. Telling each person he “examined” that they were selected randomly by the computer that looked for certain red flags on their returns.
“I’m sure it will turn out to be nothing,” He would always say, to keep his victims still while he devoured their life’s savings.
No one, not even his superiors knew the truth. Clyde never took breaks, except for lunch, and always stayed late without pay. Because of this, he was the darling of his superiors, his rate of collection was the highest in all of California.
Clyde had no time for diversions. He spent all his time pouring over clearly conscientious taxpayers records. Clyde only read the newspaper to find victims. When he read a story about a working stiff hero that had saved an old woman from a burning house, he looked both the brave man and the old lady up in his system. He would scrape and scratch until he could find some archaic tax law or reverse loop-hole and use it as an excuse to flag them for an audit.
Clyde was a master at finding a way to make them pay. To himself alone, he called it Clyde’s Tax, taxing them for their goodness. Clyde despised good happy people, for his only happiness was in stealing theirs.
Lying in bed at night staring at the cracked ceiling, he took sickly relish in the pain of these poor folks, knowing they were at home spending countless hours scraping and scratching their records together, trying to avoid “Clyde’s Tax”. Fantasizing about their mounting anxiety and how they would worry themselves sick over the impending audit, Clyde grinned a satisfied grin and peacefully drifted off to sleep.
He took a morbid pride inflicting stress on his victims even days and weeks before they sat across the desk from him on audit day. Little blue haired old ladies, blue collar workers with six kids, even better if one was a special needs child.
“Special needs” he huffed, “I’ll show you who has special needs, Uncle Sam is needy, he’s starting to grow thin from all those tax cuts. I don’t care if you want to deduct that $800 dollar a month medicine your special needs child has. I have a special way of getting that deduction back out of you.”
He loved sapping the enjoyment right out of other people’s lives, knowing that the pain he inflicted would last for months and maybe years.
“Enjoy life, ha! I stopped dreaming about that when I was 15 and mom took my allowance and bought meth with it. Misery is my enjoyment. The most enjoyable day of my life was when that IRS recruiter showed up at his High School. I could be paid real well for inflicting emotional, financial and even physical pain on good innocent people.” Clyde thought reminiscing about that day twenty-four years ago.
Clyde was the first in his class, and if they had honors, Clyde would have been valedictorian. He stayed late, paid for all the extra books to help him pass the tests and he graduated at the very top of his class. He would make all those nice happy people pay for their nice happy lives. “Happy ain’t all it’s cracked up to be anyway,” was his mantra. He became the IRS’s little darling and poster boy for a successful auditor.
The minister and his wife sat in Clyde’s office nervously holding their box of papers. They had sweated and worried for days making sure every scrap of receipt was included and could be back-checked three different ways. All their bank statements with the receipts lined up in order and all their proof of expenses was neatly stacked in a nice wicker basket. They knew that they had done what was right. They never cheated their taxes. They were conscientious to a fault, but that still did not alleviate all the fear.
They sat holding each other’s hand. Little beads of sweat popping out on their foreheads. They glanced at each other with a look of reassurance while Clyde poured through their records.
Sitting across the desk from them rifling through their records, Clyde nodded occasionally and said “Hmmm” a lot. This was all part of his act. Over the years Clyde carefully crafted his art of inducing stress. He knew the exact motions and body language that would induce the highest amount of anxiety into his victims. Like a cat playing with a mouse that he would eventually devour, Clyde played his sadistic game like a master.
He knew exactly what he was looking for. He had planned this ‘hit’ for weeks.
Smuggling their records out of the building late one night, he went over them at home with a fine tooth comb. He knew if he looked hard enough he could always find something wrong with any tax return. He could make the smallest error seem like a felony by applying any one of a number of obscure tax laws to it. The tax code was so immense, no one knew everything that was in it, except, “Tax Man”, Clyde’s secret anti-hero name for himself that no one knew but him.
A modified version of the Batman theme song would run through his head whenever Clyde scored a hit for the IRS, “Taxman nananana! Taxman!” He really was somebody now.
If “they” only knew.
Clyde sat at his desk, salivating over this potential kill. He would rake them over the coals. In the end they would feel like dirt. It wasn’t just the money, it was the righteousness, joy and peace he wanted to steal, kill and destroy. Men feared failure and women wanted security. He attacked and devoured these like a lion on the hunt.
“This could not be happening” Clyde exclaimed silently to himself. As he put all the figures together through his computer, they were getting money back, a lot of money. Clyde took it personal. It may be the governments money but Clyde treated it like his. Clyde wanted pain and suffering from the Minister and his wife. He poured through the numbers again. “No! This cannot be.” He thought. Now the little beads of sweat popped out on his forehead. “Stay calm, don’t give yourself away Taxman.” He went through it the third time and it was almost time for the office to close.
He finally relinquished victory to the minister and his wife. He tried to feign happiness as he told them the ‘good news’. He cringed when they smiled and thanked him profusely for his thoroughness and ‘kindness’. “Can we send a note to your boss, saying how pleasant and thorough you were?” the minister said. Taxman cringed, his cape in tatters. “Yes that would be real nice.” He said.
Unbeknownst to Taxman, someone in the office was listening in. Ashley Meyers the cheerful auditor in the next cubicle had been monitoring his activities since she began working there five years ago. She had even hacked into his secret files. Someone did know his secret.
Ashley, a pretty twenty-something was very conscientious, but her return rate, the money she collected from taxpayers, was lower than anyone’s in the office. Scrupulous in her work and life, she genuinely cared about people, little animals and the environment. This meant that Ashley cared about her clients, as she called them. She worked for them, to see that they got a fair shake, only using the fine-toothed comb on the obvious cheaters. She despised cheaters.
Ashley always greeted Clyde with a smile when she saw him in the hallway or the lunchroom. This made Clyde nervous. She was too good, too happy, and too pretty. She unnerved Clyde, his palms would sweat and his speech stammer when she spoke to him, always in her sweet little voice with just a hint of country south.
The question’s always asked or at least we’ve all wondered, do IRS agents ever get audited?
Yes they do, as Clyde found out when he checked his mail on Saturday. This infuriated Clyde.
“What do they think they’re doing? don’t they know I’m their best agent.”
Clyde’s records were definitely in order. There was none of that scraping, scratching and sweating for him. “Piece of cake” he thought. He called the number and set up an appointment, for two weeks from Monday. He had to take the day off of work to go to a different office than he worked in. While he was waiting for that day to come, Ashley was transferred out of his branch, he was almost as happy as when he assessed huge penalties and back taxes on some innocent little old lady.
“The happy little good girl was gone.” He rejoiced as much as Clyde could.
On the day of his audit, Clyde dialed the same number on the intercom that thousands of other taxpayers had dialed, just to see someone like him, a little sweet hint of country south voice answered and asked him nicely to please wait. He took a seat and waited for a very inconvenient fifteen minutes.
When the buzzer sounded and the door opened, out walked Ashley Meyers and she greeted him warmly, feigning surprise. Now it was Clyde’s turn to sit in the hot seat. Ashley was very thorough examining Clyde’s perfect records. But unknown to Clyde or anyone else, Ashley had caught onto his sadistic little game when she first started working for the IRS. She hated cheaters.
When she caught onto his game, she went into the big computer and adjusted his tax withholding so a little less than what was right got deducted from his paycheck. Only twenty-five bucks a week and Clyde never noticed, never checked and never suspected. But twenty-five bucks a week over five years adds up to six thousand five hundred smackaroos. This was the only slightly dishonest thing she had ever done, but the end justifies the means, right?
With relish in her voice and a sly grin that Clyde didn’t see, she printed the report and turned it for him to see. “What! This couldn’t be.” But, Clyde had never checked his own deductions. Not only did he owe, it looked like he had defrauded the IRS that he so loved working for. There were lots of records of his unauthorized access to the computers and Clyde was charged as a criminal.
Clyde was tried and convicted for his crimes and was sentenced to five years without parole. He served out his term as a dishwasher and janitor at the prison on Bird Island. Clyde, released on the last day of the five years, took a job as a dishwasher in a seedy restaurant on skid row. Mom still held his secret and so did the pretty and cheerful auditor at the IRS.
“Taxman nananana! Taxman!” He really was somebody now.
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