Blown for Good - Marc Morgan Headley [112]
Dave played a few CDs. “We are the Champions” by Queen was not the right message for this. The Queen song that Dave ended up using was “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Dave Miscavige did not pick this song on a whim. He wanted the lyrics of the song to be burned in our minds. I had never before really listened to or understood the lyrics of the song. Dave had. He wanted us to feel like the guy singing the song. As far as Dave was concerned, we had been bad and this was our execution. We were all about to be blown away into the wind.
Anyway, the first people to go were the usual suspects, the older, more reserved bunch. As people would leave the game, Dave had them lined up in one area of the room. He would jab comments at them and apologize for it having to end up like this. If the person was married or had a spouse in Gold, he would ask them why they had not thought about this before. “Is it real to you now?” he would ask.
One guy, John Oldfield, was leaving the game. He was married to Megan Oldfield in Gold. She was a video editor and they had been married at least a few years. John had tears running down his face. Dave asked him why he was crying. John said that he was going to miss Megan and that he did not want to have to leave like this. Dave said, “Well, you never cried for me!” To prove that he was not kidding, Dave had one of his staff go off and come back with actual airline tickets printed up with the people’s names on them. They were handed out to people that had been kicked out of the game so far.
As the number of people still in the game grew smaller, Dave let the music play longer. This went on for hours. When it got down to around twenty people, it started to get VERY physical. Mark Ingber and Mike Sutter actually destroyed a chair by pulling it from each other and fighting and punching each other to let go of it. Mark Ingber actually ripped the seat of the chair from the frame and sat down on it on the floor! That counted and Mike left the game!
As the final people were weeded out, people were being thrown to the ground, pushed against walls and otherwise fighting for a chair. If you could imagine what it would be like if pro athletes played a game of musical chairs, that was what it was like for the last fifteen or so people. It was very sad to watch. People who had been best friends for years were throwing each other to the ground for a chance to get a chair. Those who had lost were made to stand there and wait. Wait and do nothing except wonder where you would end up, what would you do, whom would you ever see again? Many of these people knew nothing else except for the Int Base. They had very little or no family, or at least they had not seen their family in so long, they did not even know if they could go to them. No one had credit cards, bank accounts, or much more than 50 dollars to their name. Very few staff had driver’s licenses and fewer had vehicles. And even if they did have a vehicle, it either did not run or it had been years since they had registered or insured it. How would they live, how would they even eat? What would their spouses think of them? Would they be told that they were a suppressive person and never hear from their family or partner again? There were now almost seventy people standing off in this big group. These people were now being referred to as the “Offload Group” by Dave. Fifty percent of them had either been crying or were still crying at this point. The other half might have been happy to get the hell out of there or did not care enough either way to cry. The last four people were Greg Wilhere, Sue Wilhere, Mark Ingber and Lisa Schroer. Mark was literally thrown aside by Greg Wilhere. Lisa beat out Greg for a seat. Sue Wilhere and Lisa Schroer walked around a single chair for what seemed to be an eternity while Queen rang out. Then the music stopped and they fought for the single seat. As fate would have it, Lisa Schroer got the seat and Sue was sent to the side.
“A deal is a deal,” Dave Miscavige said to Lisa. “You can stand next to me. The rest of you are not