2 Minutes. Go!

You tap into it and the whole world turns brown, man. Like that color you get when you mix all your paints up. A thick color. A heavy color. That brown is like heartache. That brown is pulling you down. When you were a little kid and you didn’t understand? Straight, gloopy brown. You know that brown; you grew up choking on it.

Yeah, it’ll change you and it’ll spin your brain right out your skull. Set yourself free. See Jesus. Don’t look him in the eyes or you’ll turn to stone.

My eyes are dilated on brown, man. My pulse is racing to the sound of the brown. I ate the brown, rolled in it. The brown dripped into my eyes and healed me. I set up a tent down at the revival meeting. Brown is the body and blood of Christ. Brown is hope. Brown is killing you slowly but you don’t know it.

Some folks smoke brown. Some snort it. Some carve it into the insides of their thighs. Some find it in a church and some in a bank and some in sport and some in solitude. Don’t touch my brown, man. I don’t have enough to share. You’ll get too much light on it, light it up. You’ll break my brown and then I’ll kill you. That sound extreme to you? Sounds extreme to me, too. Almost God-like. 

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By the time they rang the brass bell, Jep Winters was dead, his wife was no longer a virgin, and Sam John was wearing the leather winner’s belt, standing in the center of the ring and laughing. The maidenhead had nothing to do with Sam. It was a direct result of a repressed homosexual boxer who never tried women and a spurned wife who had never tried liquor. The death was tangentially related. None of it mattered in the grand scheme of things except to the old woman. The old woman smiled.

It took a while to sort out. New champion, death, and hymen destruction – that’s a lot to pack into the VFW on a Saturday night. All the yardmen were there. Plus there was a carnival in town. The carnival was full of junkies and miracles. People loved the carnival. They loved to fight and fuck and die there just like anywhere else.

Old man Porter, the mayor, liked to dress up in women’s clothing, but no one knew it except for Father O’Leary.

Jep’s body was burned. What was left of it. His wife ended up birthing a bastard right around the beginning of Spring, but she told everyone that it was Jep’s last gift to her. Sam John retired after his championship fight. He lived out his days eating pureed vegetables and shitting himself, the title belt around his soft waist. No one boxed in town after that night. Everyone figured the devil was going to the fights, and, in some ways, they were right.

Father O’Leary preached about the sins of the flesh, while he kept the secrets of his congregation in the back pocket of his pants to tinker with when he got bored. His diversions were God-sanctioned after all.

The old woman returned to the trees and vanished.

No one was around to see it.

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High noon. Remember that shit? Settle your differences. Vent your spleen. Sure, it was stupid. But it was contained. How many times you read about a cowboy loser shooting as many people as he can for some imagined slight? I mean, ideally, we wouldn't settle bullshit with bullets, but what the fuck? No one gives a shit about your manifesto. No one cares about you aside from the other pale, twisted weirdos on 8Chan.

I wonder if you will ever realize what you really took. Love. Faith. Family. Security. All gone in a second because an asshole in a suit told you things you wanted to hear and life has been so unfair. Gotta be somebody to blame. Gotta be some kids worth killing for your frustration.

I didn't get my side of ranch. I'm gonna punch every waitress in this place.

And I'm so tired of this gun debate. If guns aren't the problem, lets have a gun free year and see what changes. And tell me again about knives in England. You know how many mass knife massacres there are? You ever tried to kill someone with a knife from thirty feet away?

I guess I'll just wait until it's my turn. Go down with my knife in my hand, saying, "yup, told you so you fucking idiots."

The new American Dream.