2 Minutes. Go!

You need to hold the knife gently. Delicately. Not with a fist, but with fingers, your pointer finger on the spine of the blade. The blade is sharp. Muscle is not required. In fact, gravity will be more than enough force. Just guide the steel.

A blade this sharp opens flesh like a sigh. A release of tension. It passes through flesh with a whisper. 

If your subject is still living, they might not even feel the cut. Or it will feel like a paper cut. An itch. One can be cut to the bone and not even know it. Of course, if you're cutting dead flesh, delicacy is an afterthought, but the blade must still be sharp. 

Clean cuts, clean mind. Hear the words. Incision. Scalpel. Suture. 

Feel the numb in your throat as one last chunk of Adderal turns to goo in your nose and slithers down your throat. You aren't wearing white. 

You ARE wearing gloves. 

This was pre-ordained. It was already written. 

All that was necessary was the coda.

2 minutes. Go!

The contact was incidental. Skin brushing skin...nothing out of the ordinary except for the electric shock. Not static. It was enough to knock you backward. Enough to put you on your defenses. 

Eels and live wires have more in common than just electricity.

The sound started low...a feeling inside more than a sound, but it grew steadily until it blotted everything out. It triggered something inside you. You acted without thinking. Woke up covered in blood, mouthing the words ACTIVATED - SLEEPER CELL. The ushers took you out back for the slice blade. Throat open.

You don't know anything now. You're dead. 

Reboot.

2 Minutes. Go!

I would like to be a bird because birds aren't human. Even the smart ones are just flying around, sneaking snacks, singing pretty songs. 

They don't do anything wrong.

I'd love to be a fish because fish are just swimming. They live in a world thick with life and crowned with colorful bubbles, but they aren't in any hurry. 

Fish don't got no worries. 

I think I should be a alligator, laying in the sun. I could squirm myself down into the mud and wait for a hapless animal to come by, so I could spin it dead.

Not a stray thought in my goddamn head. 

If I had my druthers, though, I'd be a cat. Cats don't give too much of a shit about anything. Cats are napping when they aren't being apex predators. Veld editors.

Me?

I'm always hiding from creditors.

So, maybe I'll just be ash. Not dust. Dust is chaos. I've seen enough chaos. Ash is noble. 

Ash used to be something. 

2 Minutes. Go!

Oh, lord, it hurts…right down in the meat of my bones, it aches. Day by day, it gets a little worse or I become a little more intolerant of it. I hear noises that aren’t there. I sense the presence of people who never really appear. 

Wondering if you are crazy will drive you crazy. It’s a ride you can’t get off once you have started. Your seatbelt is locked. Fuck around and you might lose and arm. Hell, you might be decapitated!

You smell sulphur on the air. It twists you up inside. Your pulse quickens. 

Man, the bugs on your skin ain’t real, but they will be eventually. Patience. The bugs are more than happy to wait. 

You reach out, but it is like grasping silk. The bulk of it slips through your fingers.

Until finally, you close your eyes.

2 Minutes. Go!

C'mere buddy. Up close. I'm gonna fuck your whole belief system. Close your eyes and open your mouth, I'm gonna shove my whole arm down your throat and pull your insides outside. It don't matter that you think you saw a sign in the clouds, the heavens. None of that means shit, because everyone has their own interpretation. 

So many godly variations.

Let me pull you by the elbow, guide your face into this whirring band saw, let me pour this lacquer into your eyes. Let me cut off pieces of you to add to my collection. 

Listen lady, I know you got your own rage. I just don't care. I tried caring, but it made me too tired. I gave it up, just like I gave up drinking - it was hard, but worth it. 

We can have this conversation anytime. You know where to find me. I'll be here, sharpening my knives until they can slice air. I'll be here with a hatchet and some kerosene. I'll be flexing my fingers and imagining how good it would feel, plucking out your eyeballs.

I'll be waiting for you.

2 Minutes. Go!

 Here’s something I don’t understand. I am almost fifty. In fifty years on this planet, there have been many instances where someone has either implied (or straight out told me!) that I should hate some whole other group of people. Maybe it was gay people. Black people. A different religion. I always understood that anyone who asks you to hate a faceless mass of people is an asshole. 

There’s no way all jews can be evil. It’s absurd to think that all republicans are pedofiles. Of course all democrats don’t want to rewrite the constitution, and they aren’t all hippies. Just the idea is absurd! It would be like saying that all blind people are assholes. Are some of them assholes? Sure, probably, but not all. Absolutes are bullshit. These paper cutouts we’re told to hate just don’t exist. I’ve met tons of awesome blind people.

It’s boring, and it’s getting tiring. Are you so intellectually feeble that you need someone to tell you what’s good and bad? What matters and what doesn’t? Who you should trust? What rings true and what sounds preposterous? What your opinion should be?!?!

I’m kind of into this critical thinking thing, myself. And I’m not a paper doll. Like you, I am a complex human that doesn’t fit into boxes neatly. If you need the Cliffs Notes to life, that’s fine, but not everyone does. 

The rest of us will be over here thinking. 

2 Minutes. Go!

The sun sets on the water. The trout are either aggressive or in hiding. Trying to protect their young. The bass are cruising by, ambushing small fish from the deep cover of the weeds; they are machines programmed to kill and kill again.

They kill without emotion. 

Small bass need to fear the trout, but the big ones are untouchable. They are made for processing the meat of their neighbors. They will never sate their hunger; they are not the sensitive fish that trout are. 

The sun on the water is like paint. Drips and drabs dropped by an omnipotent and solicitous hand. The hour of the wolf leads us into the trade, night for day. Light for darkness. The darkness will last a long time, but light will come again.

You might wonder how this story ends, and it is a natural thing to wonder. Nature knows when she is being abused. Evil comes in waves. Fish and people are not so different. One trying to keep his head above water. One below. If you are scared, and you should be, then get to the weeds. The forest. Find someplace you can hide until the world has corrected itself. 

Don’t take the bait. They can make it look so good. 

Don’t take the bait.

Remember, they feed…