Chapter 7 - Max Kizer
Max Kizer.
Few people have fortune good enough to give them birth as part of the Northumbria community which is known as Holy Island, and found just off the north-east coast of England. Max Kizer had begun his life with this good fortune when he had been born on Tuesday the 4th of February 2003. He was raised on a small holding, his father a priest of the Northumbrian order, and his mother a teacher of school Mathematics. Good people, he was always surrounded by them, and what he wanted most out of life was to be good.
He read his copy of the Celtic Night Prayer book, which had been given to him on his seventh birthday, as often as he could. Sometimes in his youth, he would sit by the ruins of the old monastery, looking far out to sea, and reciting the verses from the book aloud. His favourite part of that prayer book had been the Hild meditation - which tells about not needing to be anything at all and finding the right place for your self in the world. When sometimes Max was dismissed as just a child by his elders, he would remember and repeat an ideal which he had found in the book, that there can be no experience of community without the recognition that each person is prepared to take the lowest seat. Both his mother and his father were amazed by his early understandings and believed that he would always do well.
Max was drawn to animals. He had tended those on their small holding and he kept a pony for riding. He was an only child so it was quite natural for him to look to the animals for companionship. There were few children on the island of his age, and when it came time for him to attend secondary education, he had to venture off the island each day to go to school. There he made some friends but there was always a mud bank or an estuary between them at night. Max liked his own company anyway, he liked animals and older people, and when he was old enough he took to motorbikes and to travel.
Later in life after spending some time travelling and doing bar jobs, he gained a place at Edinburgh University to study Veterinary medicine. Although some of the acts of cruelty within the profession disturbed him, he went on to graduate, and to become a small animal practitioner.
Despite some very harsh anti-farming and anti-vivisection campaigns during the first decades of the twenty first century, these things still went on. Kizer lied about his abattoir attendance at vet school, and because he was so good at everything else, they had let him off. He hoped that other students would be able to gain the same benefit after he had left. He didnt want to see welfare in the abattoirs. He didnt want animals to be mass slaughtered for meat full stop.
By the time Max was ten years old, Holy Island had been self sufficient for most basic foodstuffs for a few years. When it came time for some animals to be eaten nobody would be forced to partake. Those that would do the eating would choose an animal that roamed freely upon the island, and then capture, slaughter, and prepare it for the feast. Max had used his experiences on the island to try to educate the whole of the veterinary faculty in Edinburgh into the recognition that the farming industry and the slaughter houses were unnecessary evils. So much work had been done on this before Max arrived at Edinburgh that by the time he was graduating, much of the industrial farming in Scotland was gone. The English, the Irish and the Welsh, all in allegiance, were following suit. By 2037 meat had become a local issue and under no conditions was it legal to transport any live animal for slaughter.
Max was in and out of work as a vet because there were always problems with his jobs; not with his ability to cure sick animals, but with his attitude towards many of his human clients; and perhaps because of his morals. He had taken to the new school of healing and had become an authority upon this new and alternative way.
The final straw in his ability to practice as a run of the mill vet came on Tuesday the 4th of April 2045. He was working for a practice on Stubbin lane, a roughish part of Sheffield, and he was getting on alright. He had been working there for about six months, and Max seemed to get on just fine with everyone, in fact, many of the clients liked his method of cure. Some people were offended when Max said that it was their treatment of their own animal that was causing it to have a problem, and of course, many clients found it difficult to change their perception of their animals from pampered pets to sentient fellow beings with rights.
Then that Tuesday morning towards the end of a busy surgery, a middle-aged couple came in to see him with a young, handsome and energetic, brown and tan Doberman Pincher called Jack.
So what can we do for Jack today, Mr. Winters? began Max in his usual relaxed tone, as his clients settled down into his consulting room.
There is nothing wrong with our Jackie lad, Mr. Kizer. Its us you see, me and the lady wife we are emigrating to Australia. We cant take young Jackie with us and we cannot bear to worry about what might or might not 'appen to him when we leave him behind, explained Mr. Winters.
Ah Jackie here will have no problem. We will just get him a nice new home. When are you going?
That's just it Mr. Kizer. We are off on Friday and we dont want no-one else to have our Jackie! Do you understand that? No-one! We want you to put him to sleep.
Now Max struggled at the best of times with euthanasia. This was a first for him and there was no way that he could believe what he was hearing.
So he told them: You selfish bastards! This dog is two years old - it has a whole life ahead of it - and you want to kill it because you dont want to be worrying whether hes happy in his new home. I suggested you think again, and about your dog, not your own petty and selfish emotions!
Jackie cowered a little when Max had finished speaking and he edged a little closer to Kizer - a little further away from the Winters.
I will keep Jack! finished Max, thinking himself victorious.
You hear me veterinary. Thats no way to speak to me, or my wife! You will do your job. You are not having him! Do as we ask you or we will demand contact with your superior and I will make sure that you never work as a vet again! Your words are those of a pompous and pathetic wimp! You will put him to sleep now, do you hear me? ordered the man.
Piss off, uttered Kizer, as he left the consulting room where the Winters stood agape and with poor Jack trying to escape in the direction that Max had just gone.
Max fled up the stairs to his flat and he almost cried from pity and anger.
Of course the boss was called in. He rang up to Max on his way to the surgery and questioned him about the incident. Max told him what had happened and appealed with his reason for absolution from his reaction. The boss said that he would be right over. He came, he saw the Winters, he charmed them, he killed Jackie for free, and he sacked Kizer.
Max had two days to get his stuff out. So he went out on a bender that night and when he got back he opened the freezer to look at the dead body of Jack. Feeling foolish he placed a tiny symbolic cross on the dogs head. He then took a packet of the Killpet euthanasia tablets with the last of his whisky and fell straight into bed.
He had not set the alarm properly, or thought to close the front door, so as he drifted into the sleep of death the wind blew the door open and the security siren started to sound. Since the vets was a priority building because of the drug store the Defense Squad arrived in three minutes flat.
They found Kizer upstairs and slapped his face. What have you taken? they asked.
Jacks dead, he muttered, want to die. I cant live any more. Not now!
Pathetic ass! muttered the officer, must we save this jerk?
Luckily they noticed the tablet package in his hand and they dialed 999 for assistance and he was shot off to the Northern General Hospital - for a stomach pumping session. Because of the succession of events, the tablets had not even begun to dissolve in his stomach. All the same he was out cold for a good forty-eight hours and too right he thought he was in heaven when he awoke and Amy was there by his side.
Over the next couple of days, she discussed her work with him, and asked him to volunteer to join the asylum. What else did he have to do? He was not too sure that he wanted to be a vet any more, not if that is what it meant - just harming the creatures, he favoured most, upon order.
Yes was his answer and so Max became Amy's second group member.
Written by Joanne Mitchinson VN. BA(Hons).
- All Rights Reserved -
Few people have fortune good enough to give them birth as part of the Northumbria community which is known as Holy Island, and found just off the north-east coast of England. Max Kizer had begun his life with this good fortune when he had been born on Tuesday the 4th of February 2003. He was raised on a small holding, his father a priest of the Northumbrian order, and his mother a teacher of school Mathematics. Good people, he was always surrounded by them, and what he wanted most out of life was to be good.
He read his copy of the Celtic Night Prayer book, which had been given to him on his seventh birthday, as often as he could. Sometimes in his youth, he would sit by the ruins of the old monastery, looking far out to sea, and reciting the verses from the book aloud. His favourite part of that prayer book had been the Hild meditation - which tells about not needing to be anything at all and finding the right place for your self in the world. When sometimes Max was dismissed as just a child by his elders, he would remember and repeat an ideal which he had found in the book, that there can be no experience of community without the recognition that each person is prepared to take the lowest seat. Both his mother and his father were amazed by his early understandings and believed that he would always do well.
Max was drawn to animals. He had tended those on their small holding and he kept a pony for riding. He was an only child so it was quite natural for him to look to the animals for companionship. There were few children on the island of his age, and when it came time for him to attend secondary education, he had to venture off the island each day to go to school. There he made some friends but there was always a mud bank or an estuary between them at night. Max liked his own company anyway, he liked animals and older people, and when he was old enough he took to motorbikes and to travel.
Later in life after spending some time travelling and doing bar jobs, he gained a place at Edinburgh University to study Veterinary medicine. Although some of the acts of cruelty within the profession disturbed him, he went on to graduate, and to become a small animal practitioner.
Despite some very harsh anti-farming and anti-vivisection campaigns during the first decades of the twenty first century, these things still went on. Kizer lied about his abattoir attendance at vet school, and because he was so good at everything else, they had let him off. He hoped that other students would be able to gain the same benefit after he had left. He didnt want to see welfare in the abattoirs. He didnt want animals to be mass slaughtered for meat full stop.
By the time Max was ten years old, Holy Island had been self sufficient for most basic foodstuffs for a few years. When it came time for some animals to be eaten nobody would be forced to partake. Those that would do the eating would choose an animal that roamed freely upon the island, and then capture, slaughter, and prepare it for the feast. Max had used his experiences on the island to try to educate the whole of the veterinary faculty in Edinburgh into the recognition that the farming industry and the slaughter houses were unnecessary evils. So much work had been done on this before Max arrived at Edinburgh that by the time he was graduating, much of the industrial farming in Scotland was gone. The English, the Irish and the Welsh, all in allegiance, were following suit. By 2037 meat had become a local issue and under no conditions was it legal to transport any live animal for slaughter.
Max was in and out of work as a vet because there were always problems with his jobs; not with his ability to cure sick animals, but with his attitude towards many of his human clients; and perhaps because of his morals. He had taken to the new school of healing and had become an authority upon this new and alternative way.
The final straw in his ability to practice as a run of the mill vet came on Tuesday the 4th of April 2045. He was working for a practice on Stubbin lane, a roughish part of Sheffield, and he was getting on alright. He had been working there for about six months, and Max seemed to get on just fine with everyone, in fact, many of the clients liked his method of cure. Some people were offended when Max said that it was their treatment of their own animal that was causing it to have a problem, and of course, many clients found it difficult to change their perception of their animals from pampered pets to sentient fellow beings with rights.
Then that Tuesday morning towards the end of a busy surgery, a middle-aged couple came in to see him with a young, handsome and energetic, brown and tan Doberman Pincher called Jack.
So what can we do for Jack today, Mr. Winters? began Max in his usual relaxed tone, as his clients settled down into his consulting room.
There is nothing wrong with our Jackie lad, Mr. Kizer. Its us you see, me and the lady wife we are emigrating to Australia. We cant take young Jackie with us and we cannot bear to worry about what might or might not 'appen to him when we leave him behind, explained Mr. Winters.
Ah Jackie here will have no problem. We will just get him a nice new home. When are you going?
That's just it Mr. Kizer. We are off on Friday and we dont want no-one else to have our Jackie! Do you understand that? No-one! We want you to put him to sleep.
Now Max struggled at the best of times with euthanasia. This was a first for him and there was no way that he could believe what he was hearing.
So he told them: You selfish bastards! This dog is two years old - it has a whole life ahead of it - and you want to kill it because you dont want to be worrying whether hes happy in his new home. I suggested you think again, and about your dog, not your own petty and selfish emotions!
Jackie cowered a little when Max had finished speaking and he edged a little closer to Kizer - a little further away from the Winters.
I will keep Jack! finished Max, thinking himself victorious.
You hear me veterinary. Thats no way to speak to me, or my wife! You will do your job. You are not having him! Do as we ask you or we will demand contact with your superior and I will make sure that you never work as a vet again! Your words are those of a pompous and pathetic wimp! You will put him to sleep now, do you hear me? ordered the man.
Piss off, uttered Kizer, as he left the consulting room where the Winters stood agape and with poor Jack trying to escape in the direction that Max had just gone.
Max fled up the stairs to his flat and he almost cried from pity and anger.
Of course the boss was called in. He rang up to Max on his way to the surgery and questioned him about the incident. Max told him what had happened and appealed with his reason for absolution from his reaction. The boss said that he would be right over. He came, he saw the Winters, he charmed them, he killed Jackie for free, and he sacked Kizer.
Max had two days to get his stuff out. So he went out on a bender that night and when he got back he opened the freezer to look at the dead body of Jack. Feeling foolish he placed a tiny symbolic cross on the dogs head. He then took a packet of the Killpet euthanasia tablets with the last of his whisky and fell straight into bed.
He had not set the alarm properly, or thought to close the front door, so as he drifted into the sleep of death the wind blew the door open and the security siren started to sound. Since the vets was a priority building because of the drug store the Defense Squad arrived in three minutes flat.
They found Kizer upstairs and slapped his face. What have you taken? they asked.
Jacks dead, he muttered, want to die. I cant live any more. Not now!
Pathetic ass! muttered the officer, must we save this jerk?
Luckily they noticed the tablet package in his hand and they dialed 999 for assistance and he was shot off to the Northern General Hospital - for a stomach pumping session. Because of the succession of events, the tablets had not even begun to dissolve in his stomach. All the same he was out cold for a good forty-eight hours and too right he thought he was in heaven when he awoke and Amy was there by his side.
Over the next couple of days, she discussed her work with him, and asked him to volunteer to join the asylum. What else did he have to do? He was not too sure that he wanted to be a vet any more, not if that is what it meant - just harming the creatures, he favoured most, upon order.
Yes was his answer and so Max became Amy's second group member.
Written by Joanne Mitchinson VN. BA(Hons).
- All Rights Reserved -
posted by Joanne Mitchinson VN. BA(Hons). at 10:04 AM
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