DARK WOODS by Harris Lahti

Another flashbulb blanches the room white. “Smile,” her mother tells the purple, howling baby swaddled in its crib. Everywhere the baby—in picture, on magnets, JPEGs plastered across the internet. Roswell can’t even pull a frozen pizza from the refrigerator without being confronted with its alien face.

Roswell flips the channel from the couch. A nature documentary. Onscreen, a peregrine falcon divebombs an unsuspecting pigeon, and the baby’s howls mix with its cries.

“I think I’ll have a beer,” she tells her mother.

“I think I’ll have some unprotected sex,” she says. “Or maybe I’ll take the truck out for a joyride.”

“I said I think I’ll take a joyride,” she says.

Then Roswell goes over to the key rack her stepfather fashioned from the antlers of an eight-point buck and waits for her mother to chide her. She is fourteen, without a license.

However, her mother is too preoccupied to notice. And as another round of flashbulbs goes off, Roswell slides the keys from the rack. “Smile,” she hears her mother say, walking out.

Deer. That summer the woods were thick with them. Roswell drives the back roads, smoking her mother’s cigarettes from the glovebox, hoping to hit one. To wake up in the hospital, with her family assembled along the bedside. Not a full body cast. Just a slight brain bleed perhaps. Serious sounding but minor.

For weeks, she drives, smokes, hopes to hit one.

The way the trees clasp overhead is her favorite. The yellow spray of headlights on a grey asphalt tongue. The deer eyes that roll through the woods like marbles.

One night, a screech owl flies into the headlights, a frog elongating from its beak like a ragged hang-glider.

Another, a neon green asteroid slices the starry night.

And another, a hitchhiker: a sight so rare she stops to pick him up. It seems the next best thing to the deer, this dark figure seeping out of the woods. The way his thumb worms its way out of his torn coat sleeve intrigues her. He is so tall his knees press up against the dash. “I’m a Eunuch,” he says.

“Prove it,” Roswell laughs.

Afterward, the hitchhiker instructs Roswell to let him out. He sticks his head back inside the open window and orders her to count to a thousand before driving off. “One, two, three, four,” she counts as he seeps back into the woods.

Who, who. A screech owl comes to life.

Then Roswell stops counting, lights her mother’s last cigarette, and drives off again.

And as the trees clasp, the deer eyes roll through the woods beside her. Then, a deer emerges into the headlights, followed by another. Another, another. Until, suddenly, an entire herd has turned the asphalt tongue furry.

Roswell slows to watch them.

None of this is real, she thinks. None of this is happening.

She presses on the gas. The deer buck like crazy at first, but even crazier as the truck sends them flying. That last part is her favorite yet: the way the white underside of their tails explode like an endless stream of flashbulbs—pop, pop, popping.

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DULUTH by Andrew Higgins

The plane fulfills its purpose: we are no longer ascendant. The engine winds down smoothly, a game show loss sort of draining. The tarmac is ice-sheathed but our skid in was mild. Men outside in reflective gear gesture meaningfully towards the hull, and we look at them through the ovular windows with a small, first-world pity. My body is still hallucinating movement at six-hundred miles per hour.

We are all seated uncomfortably, waiting for permission, exchanging mild sentiments until we can get off. The thin fury of air-conditioning is louder than before. The seatbelt chime rings, finally, and we all jolt to our feet. It’s a group-rise, liturgical. We’re hunched under the rounded ceilings, staring into our respective middle distances. The plane seems to close in on us as we stand in needless silence. The reek of a changed diaper leaking into the cabin. Benign mechanical screeches issuing from under our feet. Nearby someone’s belly croaks long with hunger. We’re a fuselage of bodies, wanting to get off.

The woman seated beside me, stringy-haired and jumpy, was telling me about comparative taxes rates in Ireland, where she lives now with her husband because of his job. “They take half!” She exclaimed quietly. “Half!” Her voice was nasally but reassuring, an accent I haven’t heard for a while. I can’t guess her age. She has that life-long waitress sheen, tight-skinned, wide-eyed, always chewing gum.

A man leans over his seat, giving us both a world-weary look. Balding, wide-set predatory eyes, his collar yellowing a little after our red-eye from New York. Our eyes meet and we raise our eyebrows at one another, a way of greeting. We are open.

“Ya know,” he says to neither of us in particular, “it’s not much better here in the States. Between state and federal, my 401k, and health insurance—my one kid’s special needs—it comes out to over 50% of my take-home, too.”

The woman glances up to me for confirmation.

I say, “That’s about right.”

Her face goes gloomy. She seems to be burdened by some previously unknown woe. “Ya know,” she says in a vaguely didactic tone, “a lot of kids are turning up autistic these days. I tell ya, I saw on the news that it has something to do with all these WIFI signals in the air!” Her eyes fall to her lap and she shakes her head, a look of pale distress on her face. “You just never heard of that autism before this whole online thing.” I realize as she says this that she’s much older than I’ve guessed.

“Oh, my son doesn’t have autism,” the man begins apologetically. “Tommy’s mentally retarded.”

Good afternoon passengers. This is your captain speaking. Looks like it’s a cloudy sixty-four degrees outside…

There is a silence that the woman beside me obviously wants to fill. “Well,” the woman starts in a vaguely conspiratorial tone, “if it weren’t for Comrade O-BA-ma’s health care plan...Plus! these government people with their federal salaries and pensions and benefits!” She shakes her head again, this time, at a world bent on specific fiscal waste.

The man dips his chin towards me, looking for the third side to our burgeoning revolt. “What do you do for work?”

I look at my feet.

“I’m a consultant, with the GSA.”

They both find a variation of frown-smile at this, and a feeling arises that we’ve all sort of had enough of each other.

The door opens and the plane is depressurized, an entirely controlled danger. We all descend into the small barbarism of hasty disembarkation. Bins are pried open. Bags are ripped out. I am pushed, I push back, and no one acknowledges it. Wordless negotiations take place between opposite sides of the aisle. Each of us has our own reveries and despairs and we wear them on our faces. The passengers all enter the terminal as a dissipating community, and we fuse as individuals into a larger faceless crowd. We will abandon all knowledge of each other: we are, above all, strangers.

Duluth is convinced it’s coming up in the world. This is my hometown, but I’m disoriented in the new terminal. welcome to the james l. oberstar terminal runs across an exterior skyway. It was built recently in memoriam of a late-senator, a Democrat, and I recalled this only dimly because my Republican parents say his name with offhand venom. I walk past a pseudo-luxury coffee house, local displayed prominently on the signage (although the coffee is neither grown nor roasted here in Minnesota). There’s a full British pub next door, its ruddy baroque wooden panels bleached out by the sunlight coming in through the wall-sized windows. Next, a languid young man, dark and vaguely foreign, coughs and offers me pink salt from The Dead Sea.

Travel noises. Intercoms, electric doors, the hushed tension of people moving toward destinations. I turn towards the baggage carousel, following a sign. The slow tide of traffic outside. A few passengers’ families have paid the one-hour parking fee to greet them indoors. I see the man hug the son he described and a few others who share his general traits. I am enjoying the sight of this, hardened by the city I now live in—one of the elite coastal bastions. Then the woman from the flight waddles up to my side. She peers at me, wide-eyed. I can see that she’s waiting to tell me a secret. I raise my eyebrows, a gesture of openness, and she begins speaking from the side of her mouth. “I can’t believe they say that about their own kids!”

“Say what?” I ask, confused.

Re-tard,” she whispers, casting a look to each side. “That’s like saying the N-word!

The word hangs in the air. I realize she’s come to misunderstand autism as some sort of PC term for mental retardation. Given her feelings about taxes and health care, I find this consideration mildly ironic. Bags begin thudding down onto the conveyor belt, and the silence her statement has engendered, I realize, belongs to neither of us. Goshes and darnits and hons fill the air. I part ways with my seatmate now and wish her a Merry Christmas. This is my tribe, what I came for.

I am home.

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EXCERPTS FROM COOPERSTOWN, ND by Tyler Dillow

I wash my hands, then my face.

He carries me in a bag. A brown paper sack, rough and unevenly cut around the edges. It’s dark. He takes me out of the bag and hangs me, right above his headboard.

Coffee boils on the stovetop. Snow falls outside as seen through a window. Music plays as heard through ears. Bodies touch hands; hands touch bodies. Altogether naked. Altogether, a mug sits on the corner of a table as held by gravity. All held down by the feet of a person. On the floor, linoleum; on the linoleum, dust. Outside wet, outside ice. Outside, a certain amount of snowflakes reached human lungs. When inhaling, hold your breath. Colonial abstraction. There you are, German Shepard on a leash. There you are. Ready for attack; ready to oppress. More willing to oppress, than any other feeling you’ve ever had. You say, you didn't know you had it, but you did. Still do. Every time you don’t look or more so look. A gun on your hip following the pattern of the generation before you. You are still very much them. We know, you watched Selma. You wanted it to win best picture. You even rooted for MLK. Ignoring the facts. Ignoring the fact, you were responsible for the ending.

Ten people died in an apartment fire.

My friend kissed the ground in appreciation of earth. The dirt isn’t soft. The opposite of the silk robe laying over his recliner. My friend—say his name is Mark—lives alone. Mark wants to dig up the bones of fossilized animals or fossilized people. It’s his first time outside in three months. Mark pays this kid to bring him his groceries, but he wants to dig through the crust of the earth. Mark found an arrowhead near the river, when he was fourteen. Ever since, he thinks, he’s Indiana Jones. Mark owns a leather satchel. Mark owns a dark brown hat. Mark ordered a bull whip, a few weeks ago, and it just came in. The arrowhead stays in his front-shirt pocket.

He stirs up goosebumps on my neck. The suns rising. It shines through my curtains. Cillian sits. Half his face is, ideally, covered by shadows like a Bacon painting. He is all obtuse and sexual. Blood red stains into yellow into purple into lavender. Him into me. Windows into walls into bathrooms.

About five miles outside of town, Ronald Reagan built a missile silo. Fuck North Dakota, he said.

A man walks out of a shop carrying a framed Magritte painting. A bad print in a bag.

An old Pontiac is parked across the street. Today is sun. A movie plays on the television—Hiroshima—low and inaudible dialogue can be heard. This movie always plays; we always watch. Air mixes with the blemishes on your skin. Listen to this, a novel sentence, too long sticking and stuck to the roof of your mouth. Hiroshima, Hiroshima, Hiroshima—the tipping slow release of a snail shell. Water drips out of the faucets, the movie plays. We watch.

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UNCLE POOH’S SECRET RECIPE by Joseph Haeger

The first time I made grits I used water, the same way I made my oatmeal. Granted, I'd never had grits, but was told it was a staple food in the south, so when I saw a two-pound bag for a dollar at the Grocery Outlet it seemed like a no-brainer to give it a shot. I mean, this was a food that helped mold a culture.

The red sedan in front of me slows down, or I come up on her too fast. I tap my brakes to keep a comfortable distance between us. My speedometer reads thirty-five exactly. She's going the literal speed limit, but I'm not in a hurry today. All I have going tonight is cooking our family's new favorite recipe: Uncle Pooh's Secret Shrimp & Sausage Grits.

The grits were underwhelming that first time. This, I thought, was what an entire region kept in their pantry at all times? I made it just that one time, and I was so disappointed I threw the whole bag of grits into the trash. It was like eating a sub par oatmeal. The consistency of hot mashed baby food. I sprinkled cheddar cheese into the lumpy concoction, but the grits absorbed any flavor the shredded cheese had to offer, and instead made it into a bland, glue-like mixture.

A blue SUV zips past me. It's a two-way double yellow lined road, but some people can't ever stand going the speed limit. The impatience builds in the pit of their stomachs and they let impulse take over. Most people act on impulse at one point or another, like me with the grits.

It took the one meal of failed grits to decide they weren't for me. I could let the restaurants and family kitchens keep them in rotation, but they weren't going to enter mine. Or that's what I thought.

The SUV whips in front of the sedan and slams on the brakes. Smoke rolls off the tires out of the wheel wells as it skids to a stop. The red sedan's brake lights shine as they come to an abrupt stop.

My wife sent me a recipe she wanted me to cook for her: Uncle Pooh's Secret Shrimp & Sausage Grits. It was on the internet, so it wasn't all that secret, but I appreciated the attempt at mystifying the dish. She requested it, and I acquiesced. I wasn't about to withhold her request because I'd sworn off grits years earlier. I gathered all the ingredients, again going to the Grocery Outlet to buy another two-pound bag of grits, but this time it was a dollar fifty. While I portioned all the ingredients out I noticed water wasn't anywhere to be found. Uncle Pooh called for the grits to be cooked with whole milk and a heavy whipping cream.

A man in a dark blue suit steps out of the SUV. His clothes matched his car making it look like a surrealistic painting: him standing there blending in with his car with a double barrel sawed off shotgun hanging at his side. Before the sedan has a chance to open their door, or even attempt to drive away, the man levels the gun and fires. The driver's side window shatters—and while I know I'm imagining it, I think I see a mist of blood evaporate into the air. The man pops the barrel down and loads two more shells into the gun. He snaps it back and cocks the hammers, firing once more into the open window. This time I do see strings of blood launch out of the car. It lands on the gunman's lapel. He uses the back of his hand to wipe it away. He yells something that is too muffled for me to hear, then spits into the car.

The grits with dairy was to die for.

The gunman walks back to his car. It is still running, like he ran back inside for a forgotten cup of coffee. He pulls his door shut and drives away. The sedan's door opens, slow and methodical. The woman tries to pull herself out, but collapses under the weight of her body, crumpling onto the pavement. I squint to see if she's breathing, but can't tell. All I know is her eyes are open and she's laying on top of the double yellow road strip.

The heavy whipping cream thickened the grits so it wasn't mushy. It was able to bring the cheddar cheese flavor to the forefront of the dish without gumming the entire dish together like glue. It was rich and filling, but I couldn't help myself from getting seconds. And then thirds. It was me who had ruined grits the first time. It wasn't that I didn't like grits, it's that I made them like a jackass. I had trouble sleeping that night because I was so stuffed. Well, that and because I wanted to eat more grits.

The traffic from the other side of the road moves around the dead—or dying—woman's body. This isn't going to work for me. She is too central, and her car is on the shoulder. The line of cars begins to build behind me. Honks waft up from cars backed up in a line. I pull off to the side of the road, inching the tires over the curb and onto the sidewalk. I drift around the red sedan, keeping my eyes ahead to make sure there aren't any pedestrians walking down. Once I'm past the stalled car I drop back onto the road. My car bounces as it reenters the lane. The cars behind me follow my lead driving onto the sidewalk and continuing up the Post street hill. It takes cops forever to clean this kind of thing up these days. When I was a kid this would have been newsworthy. These new generations have no idea.

She wanted Uncle Pooh's Secret Recipe again tonight. I tried to play it coy, but I think she was aware of how much I loved the dish as well. It calls for bell peppers, but I'm going to try mushrooms and sweet potatoes instead, like a meeting of two regions in one delicious meal. Even if that's not good at least I know the grits will be worth all the effort.

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LOOK AT IT RIGHT IN THE FUCKING FACE YOU METH FUCK by Marston Hefner

He was just having a terrible anxiety attack on how this was all going to end. Berry was in the darkness of his room when he realized he was willing to go to any lengths in order to maintain his own personal property and respective riches that no one but himself had earned in his own lifetime with no trust fund or outside help but the sweat off his back and his best faculties put to use and the 20 mg tablets of Adderall he’d been prescribed ever since he burned out and thought everything was coming to an end for him; a pill that returned vigor to not only his career but sex life and had his wife remarking he was a “hyena” in bed. He would then laugh at her like a hyena and she would beam.

But the Adderall had its down sides towards the end. He could not go to sleep during reasonable hours and he was often found scratching at his desk.

So it was Berry’s not addiction but by the books Adderall intake that brought his marriage to the brink. His wife asked for a divorce and left Berry really worried, the Adderall didn’t help the worry, about what would happen to his own hard earned money? Because out of a romantic notion of forever and ever he never did make her sign a pre-nup. It was unromantic, they thought together, though now he thinks it was her idea and he agreed. And sometimes people want to come close to ruining their whole lives, they want to put it all on black, which is what the no pre-nup really was, Berry realized now.

So to counter his insane wife he had to get a specific team together. Lawyers who didn’t go by the books, didn’t even know what the books were. A team of lawyer brothers who symbolized in a peculiar way hunger and destruction.

He called them up.

“Deuce,” said someone coolly on the other side of the line.

Berry broke down and told the man how he just needed someone, something, who wouldn’t follow the rules. Please God.

“It takes this sort of desperation for us to take the case,” said Deuce. “They need to be as desperate as we are hungry and addicted. Our clients need to be so disoriented about the world, so close to breaking, that they don’t know what living means.”

Berry thanked “Deuce” endlessly and said you’re saving my life and the guy just hung up the phone but not before telling Berry to bring 100 thou to their office door tomorrow morning.

Berry did as they said and went to work where he felt he had a new lease on life. The Adderall was perking him up. The gym, in a section of his building, was warm and inviting. He spent an hour doing crunches, handstands, knee bars, and pushups. The smell of sweat meant progress. The attractive woman on the treadmill could be his next wife. The man who just walked in and started on the pull up bar could be his new best friend.

Berry went home half expecting the impossible, his wife’s ashes on the front step. That this was the kind of quick and efficient service people had come to expect but not take for granted from “Deuce”. But when Berry came home he found the dog on the couch barking at him—a small black Pomeranian. He heard a sizzling pan and the kitchen vents.

“Hello honey,” she said from the kitchen.

His steps faltered. The kitchen had been remodeled twice. The first time, you just would not believe the contractors, said the wife, oh they got what they wanted alright. The second time had been better. White walls and wood oak drawers. Nothing to distinguish it from any other upper-class kitchen. No parrot cooking gloves. No Swedish themed salt shakers.

He went around her waist and held her like that.

“Why do we fight?” she asked. “Why do we fight?”

“I don’t know.”

“If I could take back all I said. Would you forgive me?”

“It’s too late for forgiveness. We have lawyers involved now. I thought this is what you wanted?”

“What if I don’t know what I want?”

“You’re a big girl.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“I don’t like the feeling that I’m making this choice for you. It was your idea.”

“I know.”

“And no pre-nup.”

“I told you I’m not talking about that with you.”

“Not really fair. I break my back.”

“Bear.”

“You just have it comin to you is all. A team of meth heads going right at you. Boom. A bee line for you. Throwing the whole book your way. No stone unturned. Half of the money going to the addiction. The addiction fueling, burning the midnight oil at both ends. 48 hour marathons of looking for ways to get me to keep my money. And let’s not even start on the trial.”

“What are you talking about Bear? Meth?”

“The trial will be the worst. These guys are going to be talking like 2000 wpm. No joke. They’ll be doing loops around your lawyer. Nothing will go without an objection. Your lawyer will get dizzy.”

“Berry. I’m worried about you.”

“What?”

“You don’t listen to me when I’m talking.”

“I was just talking. Just now.”

“But you weren’t talking to me.”

“Here we go.”

“You never work on yourself Bear. You’re always ranting to people. You’re not talking to people. It’s the Adderall. I don’t think it helps.”

“You know you’re right. What can I say? You’re right.”

“Oh Bear. I’m going to miss you. You’re a good man.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t you want to know what we’re making tonight?”

“Looks like salmon and mashed?”

“That’s right.”

“Mother’s recipe for the mashed.”

“I know you love the mashed.”

“Sweet. It’s very sweet.”

She smiled. He hugged her back and said low in her ear: “I only wish the lawyers I hired would be so sweet. Because, hun, they’re not going to be sweet. Not at all. No mercy. Like machines.”

“Oh let’s not talk about lawyers or pre-nups or anything ugly like that. Let’s just talk about tonight.”

“Alright.”

“Let’s just act like everything is alright. That everything here is working properly.”

“Because it’s not. Not really.”

“No.”

“I find it strange we aren’t together. As if something irreversible has happened to us,” said Berry.

“I know.”

“Once you talk about divorce. No, once it happens. There is no going back.”

“OK. It’s ready.”

“Let’s eat together. Like we used to.”

“You’re so soft right now Bear.”

“I could consume you.”

“Oh not little ole me.”

“Come here.”

The lights were dim as Berry exhaled. The television was on but there was only static. They lay on the couch. A vanilla couch that was coarse and expensive. Berry went over and took a bite out of the salmon then scooped the mash in his mouth. He walked back over and lay with her. They didn’t have to do it. He could let go of that 100k he gave to “Deuce”. Let it go. He could fix their marriage. He could sleep in their bed. He could give up the Adderall.

“I love you.”

“I love you too,” she said.

“So you’re going through with it?”

“I told you I don’t want to talk about it.”

“…”

“Let’s just enjoy tonight for tonight,” she said.

“That’s not good enough,” said Berry.

“I can’t give you what you want.”

“I’m not giving you anything. Not a penny. You can keep that yoga studio I bought you. You can keep the studio, of course. A gift. You’re not keeping the house.”

“You always say something mean when I don’t give you what you want.”

“You’re very perceptive.”

“You’re a good man.”

“So you’ve said.”

“I’m going to miss you.”

“No mercy.”

“What was that?”

“What?”

“I heard glass breaking.”

“What?”

“Towards the living room.”

When he reached the living room he spotted a figure half inside and half outside his window. There was another figure behind the first. They were both dressed in black. The man in the window was cursing as he pulled himself into the room.

“What the hell are you doing?” asked Berry.

“We go to any lengths. Any lengths. You know that. Professionals,” said Deuce.

“Are you high?”

“Through the roof. There you go. Alright.” He brought his brother through.

“You two can go. Now is not a good time.”

“You hired us and now we’re going to do our job.”

“…”

“Excuse me.”

They walked into the kitchen. The wife screamed.

“Maam,” said Deuce.

“Who are you?”

“We represent Berry. Have a seat.”

She looked at Berry confused.

“Now if you don’t do what the plan is… You have a choice. You can do what we say, you can give this up, or you can go against us,” said Deuce.

“I’m going to call the police.”

“Now you can do what we say or you can go against us,” Deuce scratched at his arm. “There’s something in my veins! There’s spiders in my fucking veins.”

“Hold on just a second,” said the wife with the phone by her ear.

“You’re not listening to me lady,” Deuce said. He went to the phone and ripped it out of the wall.

The wife shrieked.

“OK. I understand. I understand,” she said.

“You see this?” Deuce licked the knife.

“I understand. I understand. It’s over.”

“By the fucking books,” Deuce stabbed the knife into the phone. “Have a good day maam.”

The brothers walked towards the living room from where they entered.

“Boys,” Berry said catching up to them. He gave a professional nod. “You did good.”

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LIL ULYSSES 666 by Paul Curran

It feels weird talking to a camera. I must look like a terrorist or a school shooter. I'll turn off the light. That's better. Your music sucks anyway. What makes you say that? I thought it sounded funny. You're the one who asked me here. 

Let's rape and kill some kid. Do you mean physically or metaphorically? I mean metaphysically. That's predictable. Many lyrics are worse. Are you taking notes?

I heard you faked your own death. Glued on a beard and hitched a boat ride to Indonesia. Killed a backpacker and stole her passport. I've got the scars to prove it. Everything I worry about sounds foolish in comparison. A blow to the head. Jet lag, boredom, neurosis. Meditation, spaghetti, asphyxiation. One day the tide might bring you something clean that slipped off the edge of a boat. I shot up the last of our heroin in a public toilet on the banks of the Ganges and vomited so much an astronaut was drilling through the wall. The pornographic ideal of becoming happens to people to ease delusions of failure. Each problem overcome is a peculiar masochistic achievement. The result a skillful pregnancy.

Is there nothing better in this world than nibbling rat poison and watching security monitors? I'm either too tired to answer that or ... Amazing. Truly beautiful. Take a look.

In recent weeks I've written so many rhymes about so many people and forgotten what they said or what they call the method of remembering. If we brand this an album it might result in a return invitation to speak at a linguistics conference in a derelict beachside town.

Hey, kid. Do you mind if we rape and kill you? I don't care. Can I hold your bag? Why so heavy? The room's at the top of the stairs. Some of the steps are broken. Don't touch the banister.

It's so quiet around here. All these dumb fantasies. We've become so good at predicting what we're going to say it's impossible to distinguish. Last night I put a portable fan in the sink and plugged it into the shaving socket with a travel adaptor. The smell made me cry. Again. Is it even possible to mentally relate? That neck, that depth, that blood sting, the boy who found a grave in that dampened bed.

Have you got a direct line to the source? We are a model. Excessively pointless and eternally lucid. In order for anything to happen, there must be space, space, space. That sounds like the same lyric. Sometimes I miss her. I never knew you did remixes. There are times when safe words must be recycled, wiped clean, altered beyond recognition. Shit like that. Gut readings. Heart beatings. Off the record. I regret everything.

What are you thinking about? Oxcarts and farmers on bicycles and motorbikes dragging supplies along the beach road. Covered in red dirt and dust. The grass nothing but rust, sparse clumps around fields, growing from ruined colonial buildings. Children playing with guns, needles, human and animal remains, garbage lining alleyways. The nervous laughter of rubbing cracked skulls on undeveloped crotches.

Spin something else. Have we got any more drugs? I can't move. Let's get some more drugs. I've gone blind. I want some more drugs. I can't hear you. Whenever your limbs twitch it's like someone's sending me a secret message. A crude nail hammered through the head on a missing person's poster. Our entire species destroyed by narrative. Have you got a dictionary? I had one somewhere ... I can't even find anything.

What if you had another superpower? A really hot girl, not as hot as her brother. Guess what's for lunch? Breakfast? Is this track even music? I poured gasoline over his back and set him on fire with a lighted candle handed to me by a fortune teller. The trail of wax went on forever. I was going to talk to him but it never happened. Love is weird. Anyway, thanks for listening.

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