Believing Lies

  by Stephen Faulkner

It all began as a fluke, a big joke. That was all it was supposed to be. We never meant it to get so out of hand and go so far as it did, but now is not the time for explanations or apologies. It has been done and gone overboard and there is nothing left to do but feel a cold sense of remorse for the whole affair – and for Dessy – and even that does no good, just lies there in the pit of your gut like a stone.

It was all a lie and we, Dessy and I, were its perpetrators. It was just a goof, a huge practical joke filled with so many inherent minor pranks built into it. What eventually happened can be blamed on the realistic validity of what began as a well-structured, beautifully executed, bomb of a lie. It was a private game and, like all our previous games, Dessy’s and mine, once it was worked up to its ultimate perfection, then we turned it loose on the unsuspecting victim.

Mind games, all just childish teasers meant to build up, then batter down the expectations and self-confidence of the mark like the time Dessy played the dumb ox in History II for the entire semester, mixing up Gaul with Rome, Rome with Greece and all their respective generals, heroes, gods and writers until there was such a jumble of intertwining bits of meaningless misinformation being thrown around and twisted apart that Mister Henson was resigned to give Dessy up for a complete dolt, only later forced to give my friend and co-conspirator an A on his final exam, though a substantially lower grade for the course itself because of the previous months of his asinine behavior. But the look on the teacher’s face – and I was in the class at the time – of complete bewilderment as he handed Dessy back his graded test paper, I could see my friend’s smirking wink, telling me that it was all well worth the B-minus that he received for the course itself. 

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