They were a carload of Shotgun Bitches. They were mean-tough-talking girls with switchblade personalities and dicey aspirations. Big girls, with big breasts, and big guns. Big girls who didn’t smile much, but talked a lot.

I tried to be cool, to be friendly, to be attractive, but I’d spent my day smoking pot and eating cupcakes. They took one look at me and had me dodging axes before I squeeze out a compliment about the artistic arrangements of enemy skulls that they had on the roof of their van. 

I winced away from them. Everything felt like a bad bit of candy, caught in my teeth. Sand between my toes. I just wanted to get outside and find some hot piece of trash to make love to in the shelter of the garbage heaps. I just wanted somebody to finish me off with a bullet to the back of my head.

My friends all laughed, but that was before the flame-throwers came out. Then nobody laughed again for a while, though I limped off home without much else to say.

I think I’m kinda mad.

But I don’t think it’s about anything.

It’s just like, a fact of nature.

Like rain, or sunshine.

It’s just happening. I’m just here with it. I’m here in a room with my anger, a room that’s strangely sized and shaped exactly like my head, and we’ve each got a knife and there’s one slice of pizza in the the centre of the room and everybody knows that we’ve always hated each other, and somewhere, watching over everything, is this asshole known only as My Ego, judging every single fucking moment to see how many bits of spare change I’m worth, to judge how much I’m worthless, just an empty balloon for a head all full of meaningless rage and the magical ability granted by god to stare at the wall until somethingness just sort of is something, whatever that’s supposed to mean.

Whatever anything’s supposed to mean,

when you look at me like that. 

I make mistakes and they just kind of happen. Personal mistakes, grammatical mistakes, spelling mistakes… Just little slips of the tongue and pen. Little bits of linguistic messiness. 

Sometimes that shit just slides, and other times it does not. Sometimes somebody brings something to your attention, and you’re not like “thanks!” you’re more like “why the fuck is that the only thing that caught your attention? It’s like you’re trying to bring me down.”

Whatever. My mouth feels warm and full of little living organisms, single-celled monsters breeding and battling across my tongue. Little white soldiers on the pink battlefield. 

There are some circumstances under which I am better at receiving criticism. There are some cases where speaking against me will just cause you to lose my ear all together. I can’t sit around all day waiting to find out what kind of a friend you are. You can either speak your piece, or we can move on.

I’m not always crazy about that part of me. “Say something wrong, and we’re done.” But, on the other hand, who wants to waste time on somebody who doesn’t appreciate it anyway? Not everybody is cut out to be your best friend, you get me? You can give and you can give and you can give to some people, and they’ll still just piss on you, out of some frustration that you won’t put them first or love them enough or stroke their ego or whatever.

I dunno. I was mad at “you” last night. “You.” “Them.” “Whoever.” I just love it when I don’t hear from somebody for weeks or months, and then I do hear from them just enough to taste the piss and bile at the back of their throats. Maybe I’m the passive-aggressive dick for taking my frustration here rather than to the person who created it, but what can I say - I’d rather bloody my hands on a punching bag, than talk to you about what a prick you can be sometimes.

Anyway. They’re still deconstructing the alley out back. You can hear the beeping of big things in reverse, and eventually, the heavy metal saw biting into pavement. The endless agony of physical violence and big rock-eating ‘bots.

I’m still deconstructing my own process. Turning my letters in and up and back on themselves. 

I’m going to stop writing, and make coffee for my girlfriend. She’s in the shower, and she’s beautiful. She has a little mohawk, and she just painted it black. She’s a little slip of sexy and dark. She’s like the sexy little anthropomorphic cartoon cat-lady I had a crush on when I was eight years old. 

Out here, everybody’s a monster. Every body is constructed from animated corpses. Every shot’s a shot to the head. Little humans on their backs like bugs, twitchy little legs pointed up towards the sunless sky. Poison in their hearts, and murder in their eyes. This is how we dance.

I dance in the nude, with little letters all stitched in a row.
Won’t you show me your little naked dance as well?