At first the few who did visit brought the advertising with them; t-shirts that ran Coke ads, pants that advertised sports. My favorites were those socks that sang the latest catchy jingles.

Then it got interesting with the college student.

The little bugger brought a stack of letter-sized posters with him. The fliers were printed on about four different eye-searing colors of paper. I watched him walk around the outside first; taping up posters. As he worked his way into the spiral, I climbed down from the tower, and cornered the kid as he tacked up some of the bright pink trash on the pillar. “Whatcha, doing there, boy?” I could see his back muscles scrunch together. He released the corner of the flyer and it flittered to the floor, flashes of black ink yelled, “Tonight Only”. The kid turned around. “Just promoting my band.” He ran a hand through his spiky blond hair. “You know that this is a no-advertising zone?” “Yeah. But it’s hard out there. Nowhere to put stuff up. I can’t afford licensing fees… sorry sir.” He trailed off, and then bent to pick up the sheet of paper. “That’s right. You’ll pick them all up alright?” “Yes, sir,” and he did. I wish they all would have.

That boy was like the start of some disease. He must have told some of his buddies cause after that day the night raids began. I started my mornings by cleaning up all the flyers in the area. It seemed like they descended every night to create an electric colored collage band-aid made of paper. The higher-ups got fidgety so, they retrofitted my watchtower with a kitchen, toilet and a bed. I moved in just as new laws, which allowed you to put your pre-paid advertising space in your will, came to pass.

That’s when things got feudal.

In broad daylight, a man showed up with a drill. He wore a Charles Schwab jersey and along with the drill, carried with him some bits and a few electro-plaques; the kind that did those promotion holograms. I hopped down my stairs one at a time as he began measuring for the plaques. “Hey there, what are you doing?” He looked up at me as I was coming down the stairs and ran. I got downstairs to find that the plaques were for Johnsonville Brats. Times were desperate.

Probably a week or two after that the first assault came. Four men in Armanis gave me quite a run for it. They brought a crew with a billboard, to tack on that damned pillar. I blocked them at the sidewalk. They didn’t say a thing, just jumped me. I gave them each a bloody nose. The crew dropped the Pillsbury board and pulled the guys off of me. They must have drawn the line at breaking the law.

Now, I was a little scared when they passed the Good Standing laws. I bought a gun. With all the background checks for new advertisers, trying to buy up what was left before the ‘Lords of Ad’, as we now called them, could tuck it into their family fortune, things got iffy. I tell you though; it cleaned up the bankruptcy courts. Couldn’t risk loosing that space to a debt you forgot to pay.

So, this ancient balding man shows up with his lawyer. He was probably the least obtrusive of the bunch of adverts that had shown up. He only wanted to set up a table at the entrance to the shrine and leave some business cards on it; funny little mouse cards. The lawyer demanded I let them through. “No, this is non-advert space here.” I held my shotgun loosely in my hand. “You don’t have any authority to use that,” said the lawyer. “No, but I have a right to protect myself.” The man laughed. His bald plate shone as he lifted his face to sky and guffawed. At the same time, his arm went up right into his jacket. I didn’t wait, I fired on him. Someone had thought about it. Someone knew that we needed that one spot that didn’t corrode our senses with flashing primary colors shouting at us to buy now or die trying, and when that little man ran away screaming murder, a fire storm started.

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