The Amazing Departure of Paul Hill
A Nuclear Nerds Story
Part I:
Paul was always a huge help around the Hidden Gate Sanctuary. With his oversized trucker hat, sleepy eyes, and gap-tooth grin, he was like a walking dream. When the toilets clogged, he plunged them. When the food ran short, he caught an opossum and gutted it and cooked it. When the dishes needed wiping, he used his robe. When you were sad, his shoulder was there to cry on. He was, as best I can say, a servant of the highest order. He simply served without expectation of payment–not financial, psychological, nor emotional.
But then one day, the Hidden Gate community woke up, and he was gone. The sleepy eyes that seemed to dream at all hours and the silly, loose grin no longer graced the underground hallways of our hidden bunker. The Amazing Departure of Paul Hill, we called it.
For days, his disappearance haunted me. I needed to know what had happened. I went searching for answers. As any poor soul living in the Wasteland would do, I assumed it was a grisly murder. I figured I’d find his body jammed into a ventilation shaft or clogging up one of the sanitary pits. I searched every nook and cranny. No body. So then I figured he had simply left in the night. I talked to every soul in the community. Surely someone had seen him walk away. Still no answers.
But then the community of Hidden Gate seemed to take a turn for the worse. Without Paul, the clogged toilets stayed clogged. The trash stayed in the cans. The composting pits were overrun with orange rinds. The dishes piled up in the sink. The water turned undrinkable. When you can’t tell the difference between drinking water and piss, it’s time to take some action. So I put on a stupid grin and stepped into the custodial closet and snapped on some rubber gloves, just as Paul had done every day he was here at Hidden Gate.
The supply closet was stocked with every item of sanitation you could think of: mop, brooms, dustpans, dustbins, dusters, cloths and rags, sprays of all kinds, and even a Hazmat suit. Hidden Gate had been well stocked prior to the explosion. And then there were the paper products: paper towels, napkins, paper plates, paper straws, and toilet paper. All of the paper materials were brown and generic and unlabeled. But then something caught my eye. Caught in the corner of a cardboard box was a length of toilet paper several feet long, like some miniaturized flag of peace. Its crinkly paper wrapping sat beside it with the name “Leo” emblazoned across it, and a picture of a lion bowing to a lamb underscored that name. I picked up the length of toilet paper, thick and cushiony–very high quality–and it seemed unnaturally bright in the dark room. Then I saw something scrawled on it, running the length of the toilet paper. The writer’s hand seemed to shake with some immense power as it wrote, and I struggled to decipher the frenetic penmanship of whoever, or whatever, had written it:
“Paul Hill, unthanked servant of Hidden Gate: Our world now needs a new breed of leader, individuals who will pull us from the quagmire of the wasteland that surrounds us not by force, but by lowly service. We are the White Flag Society (known abroad as The TP Kinhood), called to defy arrogance, violence, and hatred in this brave new world in the most base of ways. If you wish to join us, your life will gain meaning beyond compare. And yet, there is only peril, danger, and suffering in your future. Finding us is your first quest. We leave you only three clues as to our whereabouts…”
The short length of toilet paper fell from my hands. Nothing more. I can only assume that Paul himself had the remainder of the roll, directions for his quest into that weird world of hope, that place where the dreams of the good might come true in the midst of a Wasteland.
Part II:
As Paul Hill walked away from Hidden Gate, his humble and prosperous community for the past year, he felt something terrible inside of him, as if a hand had pushed itself straight up his ass and was squeezing his intestines from the inside, scratching at his kidneys, and poking his diaphragm. A hiccup came forth, full of bile and acid, and he looked down at the stretch of toilet paper in his hands. “Find the closest Marauder camp and surrender.” It made no sense. And yet, he submitted to this journey with more faith than he had ever felt in his life. Surrender. He could do that. After all, to surrender is to serve, and to serve is the most powerful vocation of all. He pulled his robe around him, dropped his hat against the swirling winds, and followed the trail of bones that seemed to grow denser and denser. Surely they would lead him toward the Hell he sought.
Part III:
And surely it was Hell. Paul was set to work in the camp of the most heinous, villainous, disgusting group of Marauders he had yet seen. Though most Nerds were killed on the spot, there were three other prisoners in the camp with Paul. All were subjected to numerous, novel methods of humiliation on a daily basis. There was an enforcer named the Iguana who too the most joy in humiliating the prisoners. The Iguana, with his mottled skin crawling with mange, and his beady, rolling eyes, made Paul clean up puke (a mixture of the Iguana’s, Paul’s own, and the puke of the other three prisoners), eat toilet paper soup out of his own hat, and flog his own back in a public display which the Marauders watched every night during dinner. Paul despised his decision to leave Hidden Gate. He had willingly walked into a place where he had become an unthanked and hated servant: a slave. But then, seven days into the biggest mistake of his life, the Iguana told him to go clean out the shitters with either his tongue or his robe–his choice, of course. And when Paul opened the stall door, he saw it again. A single, glowing roll of toilet paper sitting on the toilet tank, marked with the lion and the scrolling gold print that read, “Leo.” He unwrapped it slowly, reading carefully. The orders printed upon it sent his eyes hazy and unfocused in his head. “Hello Paul. Your first mission for the White Flag Society: Kill the Iguana. Here’s how…”
Part IV:
For two weeks, Paul enacted the plan as set forth on the sanitary scroll of the White Flag Society:
“Leo–
We’re going to kill him on the shitter, Elvis style. The Iguana takes a shit every day just after dinner. Something about eating humans for dinner makes his bowels move in the most hideous of ways. Hidden in the southwest corner of the toiletry closet are the following items: a compact drill capable of pivoting at a 90° angle and therefore fitting in the tube of the shitter, a ½” drill bit that is 12 inches long, a kitchen timer, a 200 pound test bungee cord, a mechanical trigger system, some scraps of wood, and a saw. You’re going to make a system that crams that glistening metallic bit one foot into the innards of that mottle skinned piece of evil. Don’t miss. The target should be wide open. You have seven days to prep and construct.
“I’m sure by now you’ve realized that we are not truly prisoners in this place. We three are all here because we walked up to these gates like obedient and meek servants. And servants we are. The role of the servant is to serve his master. When his master is life, he serves life. But when his master is death, as it is with these monsters, he serves death. And when servants dish death, it can be a cold and brutal plate.
“Once the deed is done, seven days from now, around the time the sun is setting, we three will flee this place. I have three small arms that I’ve kept hidden since our arrival here. Hopefully we don’t need to use them, but if we do, they’re there. Meet at the north gate immediately after you’ve accomplished the mission.”
Paul read and reread and hid and prepared in the darkness of the supply closet. When he saw the other prisoners, Abner and Mia, he kept his eyes down and discreet. Nobody could know. And when the day came, he rigged the brutal machine of death into the toilet of the Marauders at 5:45pm while they dined on nerd tacos, twisted the timer for fifteen minutes, and walked toward the north gate.
Behind a hillock, the three of them waited in silence, not speaking a word. When their watches struck six, a blood-curdling scream rang out across the camp, and the guard at the gate rushed out of his plywood tower and toward the commotion.
With the sun setting before them so as to throw light in the face of any pursuers, they walked all night. Paul had no idea how many Leos existed, how many anonymous agents operated as willing servants of the White Flag Society, but he knew he was one. As day broke, Paul, Abner, and Mia went their separate ways: to recruit, to plot , and to assassinate whatever marauding bastards they could gull into believing that service is weakness.
Long Live the White Flag Society
