“I don’t believe in you or me.”

It’s Halloween, and the girl who’s been voted Most Likely To Break My Heart is standing on the rooftop of the candy store. She’s got an automatic rifle in her hands. And the candy store is burning. 

It’s Halloween, and I’m wearing a mask. It’s semi-transparent, so you can still see me through it; my Caucasianly pale skin, and my nervously brown eyes. I’ve got a candy-bag full of freshly harvested sets of teenage genitalia; it’s nothing sexual, from my end, but we caught a pack of them trying to molest a slow-moving herd of cattle, and we felt like some form of retribution was required. 

Yeah, she cut their balls off, and left the boys leading by side of the road. The cattle stampeded, and took out a local shopping mall. It’ll all be on the news tomorrow. 

Half the world’s consumed by a storm as big as the moon, and here we stand, drenched in rain and laughing, while the candy-store burns. 

The air is alive with the smell of napalm and jujubes. Artificial flavours and colours turning to beautiful plumes of smoke, and heaps of soggy ash. The air is caramelized, and crisp. It reminds me of wanting to live forever in a single moment. Let’s just be this, and right here, for the rest of all eternity. 

But that girl, man, she doesn’t believe in anything. She’s drunk on drugs and full of strange spites. 

She’s gonna burn down this world, and put up a taco-stand in its place.

This: this thing we’re sharing; it’s the beginning of forever. We’re going to be here a long time, we’re going to be here together. Trapped between the walls of better rooms we’ll never really enter.

It must be a crawl-space we’re in, because here I am, on my knees again. Fuck I hope you’ll notice me. Fuck I hope you’ll talk back,  you’ll say my name, you’ll look me in the eyes like you’re killing me with your line of sight.

I wanna be in your POV. I want to take up big, blocky sections of your frame-rate. 

This thing: It’s unwieldily and ugly, like I feel most days. I thought you were going to make me feel good about myself, but instead you just make me feel like I’ll never be enough, will I? You’ll always be wishing I was a little more than I am. I’ll always be wishing it even louder. Self-hate hangs on me like a shirt on a door-knob. 

I wish I was doing anything better than I’m doing: this.

I invented a new comic character. I call him…

The Ethnicator!

He has the power to punch people into different ethnic groups.

“Watch out – he’ll beat you black!”
“And blue?”
“No… just black.”

Yes.

 Just imagine, tough-guy dialogue like…
“I’m gonna beat you into a new shade of Asian.”

Or…
“Once you go black, you’ll have to have me kick your ass again to go back.”

And…
“When I’m done with you, you’re gonna be more ugly and Irish than the Saint Paddy’s Day parade.”

Get ready for it, true-believer!