It was May 2023, and I was alone in my apartment, over-thinking. Angelicism01 still had me blocked, Barrett was in LA, and Chandler was emotionally unavailable.

I was beginning to spiral, thinking about how the Plan B I took may not work. After a bit of research, I realized that the morning after pill is only effective before ovulation, not after. Having never had a regular cycle, I had no idea if I was post-ovulation or not.

Curled up on my naked mattress, I conjured up intricate fantasies in which I found out I was pregnant and had to break the news to various people. I broke down, crying tears of self-pity for about an hour before hoisting myself off the floor, drying my tears, and walking next door to pay a surprise visit to my neighbors, Kameryn and Lauren, two UT seniors I had befriended months before.

The girls lived in a quaint little house filled with cats and stacks of poetry books. When I rang the doorbell, they received me with joy. Our mutual friend, Georgia- also a college senior- was hanging out in their living room, doting after a gray cat.

The three girls were getting ready to go to a college band concert, and they invited me to come along. One of the girls- Kameryn- was preparing to meet up with a boy in said band and seemed a bit nervous. She kept changing her outfit, asking for advice. Finally, she settled on a very pretty sea foam green silk top, and after a spritz or two of Margiela Jazz Night, she drove the four of us to a suburban backyard gathering. It was the type of house party teenagers in movies throw when their parents are out of town, only to inevitably get busted upon their return the next morning. For the first time, I felt old, looking into a sea of college students. Though I was only 22 then, I felt out of place. After a couple of Whiteclaw surges, however, the alienation melted away, and I started conversing with strangers.

The band was bizarre and psychedelic with illuminati theatrics. The boys performed in black robes and masks. Before picking up their instruments, they chanted and paced around, stamping people’s wrists with an unknown symbol for unknown reasons. One robed figure stamped my wrist and winked at me through the slits of a Guy Fawkes mask.

“I think that one likes you,” Lauren observed.

“Wish I knew if he was cute or not,” I said, laughing, “Impossible to tell with the masks and shit.”

“Looks like a whole lot of heresy to me,” Georgia commented disapprovingly, in her thick Southern brawl. “Looks like a mockery of Catholicism. I don’t like it one bit.”

“It’s giving KKK, but I don’t think that was the intention,” I remarked.

The band played some psychedelic slop for what felt like hours. When it was finally over, the boys threw off their masks, casting them into the audience. The guy who had winked at me earlier, then locked eyes with me, tossing his mask in my direction. It fell at my feet. He was, by far, the cutest in the band.

“You should go talk to him!” Georgia urged me.

“I don’t know,” I said, feeling shy, “Maybe if I were drunker.”

“C’mon!” Georgia exclaimed, taking me by the arm and ushering me into the house, where the band had just disappeared to. “He could be your husband one day! Then, one day, we’ll all go to your wedding and you can thank me!”

“He’s cute. But I don’t really think he’s my type,” I replied, “Too blonde, too tall.”

“God works in mysterious ways,” Georgia reminded me, “You never know what might happen. Just talk to him.”

Feebly, I agreed, following her into the house’s kitchen, where we made ourselves vodka sodas in a pair of red solo cups.

I stood around awkwardly, next to the refrigerator. It only took a few minutes before he approached me and introduced himself.

“I’m Rob,” he said, and I shook his hand, “I’ve never seen you around campus.”

He was much taller up close, I realized. So tall, I had to arch my neck up to talk to him.

“I’m Sierra,” I said, “And I don’t go to UT. I graduated college a year ago. I went to Bennington in Vermont.”

Then, we made very boring small talk. He told me that he got into UT on a football scholarship, but wants to be a musician. I told him that I’m a writer, and when he asked where he could read my work, I said pompously, “Google me.”

“Are you like a journalist of some sort?” he asked.

“God, no!” I scoffed.

“What’s wrong with being a journalist?” he asked.

Georgia, who was standing beside us, piped up, “You know what Kirkegaard said about journalists?”

“Who’s that?” Rob asked.

“Who’s Kirkegaard?” I scoffed again, laughing at his ignorance. “He was a famous Dutch theologian slash philosopher.”

“Right,” Georgia continued, “And he said he’d rather his daughter was a prostitute than a journalist.”

Georgia and I cackled.

“Wait, why?” Rob asked, looking genuinely lost.

“He was onto something with that,” I declared, “It’s much dirtier to whore out your mind than your body.”

“What do you mean ‘whore out’ your mind? Wait. Uhhhh.” Rob looked like he was trying really hard to think.

“Like it’s a metaphor,” I snapped.

**

Before leaving the party, Rob and I exchanged numbers.

Georgia liked the idea of me getting with a good-looking, honest Texan boy, but I found Rob to be too Golden Retriever-ish. “He would bore me,” I told her.

“Boring is better than a lot of things- Boring is better than evil. Better than the self-destructive men you involve yourself with for self-destructive reasons,” she replied, sagely.

I wanted to admit that she was right, but I just couldn’t imagine myself marrying a man so untormented and completely normal.

“I guess my problem is that I like it when men have problems,” I said, sighing.

After the party, the three girls and I returned to Kameryn and Lauren’s house for a final drink. Drunkenly, I continued to vent about Chandler.

“When I meet a man, and there’s something off about him, I just want to learn more. Like, what made him that way? What part of his brain is missing?... I’m an intellectual person, and I like to seek out problems, just so I can solve them- That’s why I like Chandler so much. I want to understand him, but his behavior is so bizarre, I can never predict what he will say or do next- That’s why he’s so ceaselessly fascinating to me. He’s a man at war with himself, at war with his passions, grappling for self-control, yet failing again and again. He is in so much pain- And, for some reason, that is so beautiful to me.”

“And, what would happen if you were to solve his problem? If he were fixed? Would you still love him then?” Lauren asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, “I don’t think so. I think I would get bored of him.”

“Don’t you think you are, perhaps, using him?” Lauren queried.

“Using him for what?” I asked.

“To hurt yourself,” she said.

“To hurt myself, how?”

Georgia, who had been listening attentively the whole time, piped up, “Hurting yourself by having premarital sex with him.”

“You said that he came in you? Without asking?... What if you got pregnant? What if you had a baby?” Lauren asked.

I thought for a minute, then replied, “I don’t know, honestly. I don’t know what I would do.”

“Life creation is the greatest gift that God has given us,” Georgia said, staring off into the distance, wisely, “It is not to be messed with.”

“She’s right,” Kameryn agreed, “Letting the wrong person inside of you is one of the most spiritually damaging things you can do.”

“And if you feel compelled to do it, you probably have your own problem to be solved,” Lauren said.

“Which is?” I asked.

“Why are you using troubled men to hurt yourself?” she asked me.

It was an excellent question. And when I went home, it echoed through my mind- Why am I using troubled men to hurt myself?

First of all, I am also troubled- that is the obvious answer. Secondly, I do it because I’m bored.

**

Giving Rob my number turned out to be a huge mistake. He started texting me incessantly. I would respond with single syllable answers, if at all, taking up to 24 hours to get back to him. This, I thought, would signal to him that I’m not that interested- (Although, if I really wasn’t interested, I guess I wouldn’t have responded at all.)

Truthfully, I was lonely, and so, I agreed to go on a date with him out of sheer loneliness.

Rob wanted to meet me at a place called Cidercade, which is an arcade that only serves hard cider- two things I dislike- but whatever, I was willing to overlook it. I hadn’t been to an arcade since I was a child, and I was open to the possibility of it being quirky and fun in a very Austinian way.

Anyway, I totally forgot what Rob looked like, so I wandered around the arcade, looking for tall blonde chads. He found me first, shouted my name.

“Oh hey,” I said, turning around to see him carrying two enormous cups full of cider.

“I got you one of these,” he said, handing me one.

“Wow. Thanks.”

I took a sip and looked around at all the dazzling, blinking gaming machines, “I haven’t been to an arcade since I was a little kid. I don’t know where to begin.”

“Really? I go here at least once a week,” he said, “I’ll show you around.”

We started with the pinball machines. Turns out, I am hilariously bad at pinball, and at every other game we sampled.

Game after stupid game, I lost and lost again, as Rob recited mundane facts about himself, none of which I remember.

He never asked about me. If he had, I would’ve enjoyed trauma dumping on him, and maybe that would’ve alleviated the pain of losing so many arcade games. Maybe, then, I could’ve recontextualized my loserdom and poor reaction timing as part of a larger narrative of neurodivergency, trauma, and abuse. And, by contrast, I would win at the game of storytelling, since, inevitably, my life has been more dramatic than his… But, no, he never asked for my story, and that pissed me the fuck off.

Rob then challenged me to a game of air hockey. This time, I thought, I might have a chance at winning…. But, no, he crushed me, and he took great pleasure in doing so.

He cheered, scoring once again; I threw down my mallet and slunk off into the blinking neon dark.

“Hey! Where are you going?” he called after me, following close behind.

“I need a cigarette!” I declared, “Where is the goddamn smoking section?”

“There is no smoking section. This is an arcade,” he stated very matter-of-factly.

I stormed off to the parking lot and lit a cigarette. I offered one to Rob and he laughed and waved the cigarette away, “No way, haha! Those things give you Cancer!”

“So does the sun. So does being alive and growing old,” I countered, taking a deep drag.

Rob shrugged, unable to come up with a response to this.

“So, what do you want to play when we get back inside? More pinball?” he asked, eagerly, like a puppy.

“I don’t want to go back inside,” I declared, coolly.

“Aw, c’mon! I got us all-night passes! Do you know how expensive those are? They stay open until 2am and it’s not even midnight!” he whined.

“And that was very nice of you, but I want to go home now,” I said, on the brink of tears, my voice warbling as I mouthed the word home.

Noticing my swollen eyes, Rob grew alarmed.

“Hey? What’s wrong? Did I do something wrong?” he asked, frantically.

“No, no, no,” I muttered. I stamped out my cigarette, then burst into tears, collapsing onto the sidewalk, covering my reddened face with my hands.

“What’s wrong? Tell me,” he begged, crouching down beside me. “Honestly, you’re freaking me out!”

“Can I ask you something?” I asked, sobbing. He nodded. “And will you give me an honest answer, even if it hurts my feelings?”

“Sure, thing,” he affirmed, nodding again.

“Do you think I’m retarded?” I asked, my voice cracking as I choked on my tears.

“No!” Rob shouted, sounding almost relieved- “Absolutely not! You are hell of a lot smarter than me! If you’re retarded, then, God, I must be…”

“I know that!” I snapped, suddenly, looking up into his clear, blue eyes-“So, then, why do I always lose at everything? Huh?”

“Oh, that’s what this is about then?” he asked, chuckling with relief.

“There has to be something wrong with me, I know it!” I exclaimed, “I have poor reaction time or spatial reasoning or something, and it prevents me from winning things! It’s always been like this, since I was a kid. It didn’t matter what the basis of the competition was, if it required speed, I was always last place… I was slow, mentally and physically,” I explained, as the insecurities of my childhood came flooding back.

“I don’t think there’s anything obviously wrong with you, besides the fact that you are maybe a sore loser,” Rob said, winking at me.

“I was always slow, mentally and physically,” I repeated, “That’s why I became a writer…”

“Because you were bad at sports?” he asked, looking confused.

“Because I could only come up with clever things to say after the conversation had ended and it was too late. So I would reimagine the interactions and write them down,” I explained, “In my version of my life, I was an entirely different person. And now I just remembered that that isn’t me…”

“Huh,” he murmured, scratching his head, “You are one interesting chica. Haha.”

“Anyway, I’d like to go home now,” I declared, “But I don’t think the bus runs this late.”

“I can drive you,” he offered, smiling a kind, lope-sided smile.

“Really? I would appreciate that… And I’m sorry I freaked out on you like that… I’m just PMSing or something.”

***

Rob drove me home in his truck, playing his own music all the way there.

When we got to the Chateau Duval, a pang of impending loneliness hit me, and, against my better judgement, I invited Rob into the apartment.

It was dirty and embarrassing inside, I realized too late. There was a pile of dishes in the sink, flies circling around them, balls of dust on the floor. Rob didn’t seem to care, as he peered into my refrigerator and made us both a drink.

For a few hours, we sat on the couch and drank and drank. Maybe it was the vodka or maybe I started to really like Rob. Perhaps I’ve been too quick to judge him, I thought. And, even if he isn’t my type, he is objectively attractive- As I got drunk, that seemed to be enough. When he finally leaned forward and kissed me, I didn’t push him away. He wasn’t a great kisser, a little sloppy, but it was far from unbearable.

When we migrated over to my mattress, I didn’t hesitate to take off my clothes. He didn’t either. His body was beautiful, the masculine ideal- but that didn’t matter, because as soon as he tried to insert himself, my entire body turned against me, or rather, against him. A sharp electric pain coursed through me. “Stop!” I shouted, pushing him off of me.

“What? Why? I can’t!” he shouted back.

“Yes, you fucking can! Now, stop! Or else, it’ll be rape!” I screamed, eyes gleaming. “Is that what you are? A rapist?”

“No,” he moaned, “But you were fine with this a few seconds ago? What’s wrong?”

“You’re wrong!” I shrieked, “This is wrong! Just get your clothes and get out!”

I tossed him his clothes and gestured to the door.

“Gees, it’s like 5am and I’m too drunk to drive home- Are you really going to make me leave?”

“Yes- Just GET OUT! NOW!!” I screamed, throwing a glass onto the floor for emphasis. Rob, watching it shatter, got up quick, shimmied his pants back on.

“Holy shit! You are crazy!” he exclaimed, “I really hope you get the help you need, whatever that means.”

I handed him his belt and his hat and shouted, “Get out of here, loser!”

“Excuse me, what did you just call me?” Rob asked, looking mildly amused.

“I’m just another game to you- aren’t I? I know I am. But this time, I win, you lose!”

As he stepped through the door, there were tears in his eyes.

“I just thought you were pretty,” he muttered.

“Go home and cry about it!” I yelled, slamming the door in his face.

Then I collapsed onto my mattress and cried myself to sleep, unsure of why I did what I just did. Was it because he wasn’t Chandler? Or because he reminded me of boys who used to poke fun at me in middle school? I wasn’t too sure.

Why do you use troubled men to hurt yourself? Lauren’s question reverberated through my brain again. Why did Rob repulse me? Because he was incapable of doing me harm? He didn’t even have the imagination to think of doing so… And what was wrong with that? What was wrong with me?

Without Barrett, Angelicism01, or Chandler, I was truly alone, as I’d never been before. In fact, I felt lonelier than I did during the pandemic, when I was stranded at my parents’ house for six months.

As I did back then, I listened to podcasts, attempting to drown out my nagging, self-deprecating inner monologue. I took long, sweaty walks in the Texas sunshine, airpods in, listening to the Red Scare girls’ prattle. Though I didn’t always agree with their politics, I had been listening to Dasha and Anna since 2018, and my fake, parasocial relationship with the two of them was extremely comforting to me at this time. It got to the point where I was pretty much listening to them 24/7. Whenever the loneliness demons crept up on me, I would turn on another episode of Red Scare, letting it play in the background, like white noise, and they would go away.

For a few days, I went to work at the cinema, and Chandler was cold to me. I believe he deliberately moved his schedule around, in order to work with me less.

His iciness burned. And yet, in his absence, I grew closer to my other co-workers, Lucy and Kayley, among others, who, after a few post-shift drinks, were more than willing to listen to my heart-broken rants.

All of this changed however, when, a week later, Chandler and I finally worked another shift, side-by-side, at the ticket counter. The ice had melted, and he was acting as if the past week had never happened.

“How have you been?” I asked him quietly, once the movie-goers had filtered into the theater.

“Incredible,” he replied, grinning, “Better than ever, actually.”

“That’s good to hear,” I said- though, I was bitter, knowing that he felt none of my pain.

“I’ve been reading that book, The Artist’s Way, and it’s really been helping! I’ve been praying, journaling, writing my morning pages everyday. I even went for a run yesterday!” he exclaimed, eyes bright as a zealot’s.

“Wow. That’s great,” I responded flatly, thinking of all of the times I attempted to keep up with Julia Cameron’s “morning pages” technique and failed, due to my own laziness.

“How have you been doing?” he asked me, finally.

“I’m doing great,” I lied, then kept lying- “I’m actually flying to New York soon, for the premiere of the movie I worked on with Angelicism. It’s called Film01, and it’s going to be screened all over the world.”

“Wow!” Chandler exclaimed, “Congratulations! That’s so exciting.”

“I know. I’m excited. It’s funny because I almost didn’t go. Jont- I mean, Angelicism was mad at me. I don’t even remember what I did to deserve his wrath. He’s just like that. Very difficult to work with.”

“Sounds like a very stable genius,” he joked, quoting Trump.

“You know, he edited the entire film in a public library? The people in his town call him ‘library man,’ because he’s always at the library.”

Chandler laughed, picturing the mythical Angelicism01 as “library man.”

“Why not just edit on a laptop?” he asked.

“Because he doesn’t have one. He threw his laptop in the river. Then he bought another one, and then he threw that one in the river, too,” I explained, laughing, picturing an irate Jonty hurling technology off a bridge.

“It’s like that scene in Office Space…”

“Oh yeah. Literally… Also, when he and I fight sometimes, he throws his phone out the window, then waits a few days to buy another one- Just long enough, so that I start to wonder what he’s up to,” I told him, giggling.

Our supervisor materialized behind us, leaning against the kitchen entryway, checking his phone. Chandler and I continued our conversation unperturbed.

“Sounds like this Angelicism guy has a crush on you,” Chandler said, his lips curling into a smile, as he moved to pour himself another soda.

“That’s one way of putting it,” I said, smiling also.

“And who wouldn’t?” he whispered in my ear, right before we were interrupted by our supervisor, informing us that it was now time to clean theater two.

My heart hummed, broom and dustbin in hand.

Why was he flirting with me again? I thought, then, abruptly, I stopped thinking, and let the mutual flirting ensue. It felt so nice to be noticed again.

*

In the filthy theater, among a cluster of skittles, Chandler found what was not a skittle, but an unidentified blue pill. He held it up to the light for a long time, studying it, in awe.

“I think it’s an adderall,” he announced.

“Let me see,” I demanded.

I examined the pill. It did not resemble any adderall I’d taken before.

“Probably some old man’s blood pressure medication,” I said, shrugging. I moved my hand, as if to toss it into the garbage, but Chandler stopped me, cupping his fist, firmly, yet gently, around my wrist.

“Wait,” he said, “I’m going to take it.”

“Are you crazy? I thought you were sober?”

The two aren’t mutually exclusive, I thought.

When he let go, I made a split-second decision and yeeted the tiny blue pill into the trash.

“Sorry,” I said, “You’re sober- Remember? Unless that’s changed since the last time I saw you?”

He shook his head, crestfallen.

“You don’t even know what that was! It could’ve been Tylenol or it could’ve been cyanide- Who knows? But it’s not worth it to find out,” I reasoned.

“It was an oxy,” he muttered, staring at the garbage can, mournfully.

“And you are a drug addict,” I mumbled to myself, watching him rifle through the trash bag, in desperate search of the pill.

Eventually, he gave up, and seemed to forget about it. Though, I always wondered if he went back when I wasn’t looking and found it and took it. Perhaps that would’ve explained some of his ensuing Dr.-Jekyll-and-Mr.-Hyde-like behavior, later that night.

*

At the end of our shift, Chandler offered to drive me home again. Grateful, I said yes.

“Are you hungry?” he asked me. Again, I said yes.

“Do you want to come over? I could make you dinner,” he offered.

Yes, I said; My heart accelerated.

“There’s this movie I want to watch. On Criterion. It’s called Exotica. Have you heard of it?” he asked.

“I’ve heard of it, but I haven’t seen it,” I replied.

“I want to show you Exotica, and I want to watch it together. It’s kind of a sexual movie though, and I hope that isn’t weird. I just want to hang out platonically this time.”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” I said, though I felt confused by his intentions- Did he really miss me so much? So much, that he would hang out with me without the promise of sex hanging in the air? If so, then why pick a sexual movie to show me?

“If it’s too weird, we can just watch something else,” he suggested.

“I know I can control myself- but can you?” I asked, turning to look at him.

“Absolutely,” he affirmed. This assurance was followed by a miniature gulp, and I knew he wasn’t too sure. I smiled slyly- What did I care?

“But, of course,” he added, grinning hornily, “Nothing will stop me from thinking about it.”

“Same,” I said.

“In fact, I’m already thinking about it right now,” he declared.

I glanced downwards, towards his crotch, to confirm whether this was true or not, but it was dark, and I couldn’t tell.

“Anyways,” he continued, “I really think we can do it- Hang out platonically, I mean. I even threw out all my condoms this morning. So even if we wanted to have sex, we couldn’t.”

Chandler’s logic was wobbly, at best- What? Did he think that sex was impossible without condoms? Did he really believe that a lack of condoms would stop two horny individuals from fucking?

“Wow. How smart of you. You really know how to think ahead,” I replied, semi-sarcastically- though the sarcasm was lost on him.

For dinner, he made me some sort of easy-bake pizza. When we finished eating, we migrated to the couch, sitting as far apart as the furniture would allow. We tried to find Exotica on a streaming service, but due to technical complications, we ended up watching Luis Bunuel’s Belle du Jour instead. I’d already seen Belle du Jour once, as a teenager. At the time, it bored me. Sure, it had sex and violence, but it was all so muted. As a teen, I wanted to be shocked, and shockingly little could do that.

Upon viewing the movie a second time, however, I found Catherine Deneuve’s quiet perversity intriguing. That, and I was drawn in by the fetishistic stylishness of the movie, which was costumed by Yves Saint Laurent himself. There are dazzling close-ups of buckled shoes, ripped stockings, and, of course, of Pierre Clementi’s golden grills, long leather jacket, and cane- a look that made a lasting impression when I first saw it.

For several hours, Chandler and I silently watched Catherine Deneuve’s experiment in degradation. When gangster Pierre Clementi came on screen, I made some comment like, “He’s the hottest guy ever!” - I couldn’t help it! Chandler, possibly becoming jealous of the long-deceased actor, positioned himself closer to me on the couch, then continued inching closer. By the time the credit sequence came on, I turned towards him, and his face was right there, on top of mine. Before I could remind him of our promise to stay platonic, he was kissing and kissing me, shoving his tongue deep in my mouth, as if to prevent me from speaking. Conflicted, I debated pushing him off of me- Wasn’t that what he would want me to do, if he was in his right mind? But I let him continue, as he unbuttoned my pants and started to finger me.

Maybe this time he’ll be ok? I thought- but, of course, that wasn’t the case.

Wordlessly, we took off our clothes, and just as we were about to have raw sex on his couch, I asked, “Are you sure you want to-”

Before I could finish my question, Chandler had clapped a hand over my mouth, and with astonishing aggression, flipped me over. Penetrating from behind, he writhed on top of me, and I, on top of the floor, and within minutes, he came inside me. As he came, he let out some sort of scream- a cry of terror.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, sitting up.

“Fuck!” he shouted, bursting into tears, “I did it again!”

This is the first time, I realized, I had ever heard Chandler, the good Southern Christian gentleman, curse.

He ran out of the living room, flung himself across his bed. Weeping profusely, he looked like a mirror image of the tapestry hanging above him, the one depicting Tom Cruise in agony, a scene from Eyes Wide Shut. When I followed him into the bedroom, I almost laughed upon seeing him- the parallel was so absurd.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, approaching him cautiously, as if he were a wounded fawn found on the side of the road, failing its limbs around wildly.

“I don’t want to freak you out, but-” he started.

“Try me,” I interrupted, “I don’t think there’s much that could freak me out at this point- What is it?”

“Everytime I come, I want to kill myself,” he confessed, tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Yeah that’s what the French call La petite mort,” I explained, “It’s normal to feel that way. You feel like death for a few minutes, then you feel more vital than ever.”

“I just want to die, so badly,” he moaned into his pillow.

“Sex is a paradox. You have to die a little bit in order to create new life,” I said, sitting beside him, stroking the back of his head.

“Don’t touch me,” he hissed, swatting away my hand.

I stood up.

“Sorry, sorry,” he apologized, suddenly- “I know you’re just trying to help, but I think I need to be alone right now.”

“I think I need a Plan B right now,” I declared, “Remember how I told you that I’m not on birth control? Remember how you had that genius idea to throw away all the condoms? And then another genius idea to not pull out? ”

“Fuck,” he cursed again, remembering- “Give me five minutes and then I’ll drive you to CVS and take you home, ok?”

“Ok.”

**

I left him and sat back down on the couch. Across from me was the ginormous flat screen TV, now turned off, vast and black. I examined myself in its reflection.

I am a bad person, I realized.

I curled my finger around the strands of faux fur blanket, then curled. Listening to his sobs echo out from the other room, I smiled. I couldn’t help but smile. I tried to bury the smile, but some maniacal force kept pulling it back out again.

I wanted to sympathize with him, truly, but I couldn’t fake a tear. At the time, all I could think was- This is going to make for such a great story! and, I feel like I’m in ‘The Piano Teacher’ right now!

Immediately, I started to tailor the nights’ events for narrative optimization. Tomorrow, I would go out with my friends, get drunk, and recite the tale of the boy who came so hard, he tried to kill himself. Which is exactly what I did.

I don’t know if my emotions are broken or not, I thought, at the time. They don’t swing back and forth on the pendulum, from happy to sad. I just feel stimulated or I don’t.

In that instant, I felt stimulated. That is all that I felt. Although, stimulation isn’t really a feeling, but a degree of sensation. Some instances are more sensational than others. This was one such sensational instance. To me, there are no pleasant or unpleasant sensations, only an infinitude of intensities to be registered. Once the intensity of my stimulation breaches a certain threshold, I smile. The smile, however, is untethered to my emotions. It means nothing, apart from the fact that something is happening.

I smiled with no basis of happiness.

Something happened, I reacted.

Finally, something happened.

**

When Chandler calmed down, we smoked a cigarette, standing out on his balcony, gazing down at a cluster of palm trees.

“Do you ever write about me?” he asked.

“Yes,” I told him, then I asked him the same question.

“Yes,” he said, “Everyday. In my morning pages.”

Then, in the dead of night, he drove me to CVS. Turns out, we weren’t the only young couple waiting in line for a Plan B at 2am, but one of three. We split the cost of the pill. Even though I hardly had the money, I didn’t complain. I swallowed it. Then, in an act we both thought to be cute and sentimental, we ripped the Plan B packaging in half and with a stray sharpie, signed the back of it. I gave him the piece with my signature, he gave me his, and we agreed to keep them forever.

“In memory of the time we could’ve created a child by accident,” I said, handing him the scrap of cardboard, “But then we remembered Plan B.”

Chandler dropped me off at the Chateau Duval, walking me all the way to my door, on the third floor. He hugged me for a long time, then said goodbye. The moonlight sparkled in his eyes, and, suddenly, I thought how, even my religious parents would approve of Chandler, if I were to date him. I wanted him, I realized. But it was too late. Everything was over between us, that’s what the hug was for. This was goodbye.

On Thursday, May 11th, 2023, printouts of a text I wrote were distributed at an art show in Chinatown, NYC. The show was for the painter Sven Loven and was titled “Humiliation Ritual,” a reference to Mike Crumps’ infamous Substack post about the Dimes Square scene. The show, which was held at No Gallery, included pastel-hued portraits of Dean Kissick, Siyuan Zhao as MIYA BPD GOD aka Charlotte Fang, Peter Thiel, Bliccy, and other scene-adjacent icons. To my surprise and delight, it even included a portrait of me, titled “Bennington E-girl (Sierra).”

When Angelicism01 saw pictures of the show and my text, which was published on the gallery’s website, he was livid. Instead of being proud of his protegee, he fumed with jealousy, spamming me with all caps texts.

“WHERE AM I?” he asked, “I AM INFINITELY MORE INTERESTING THAN THESE HOES.”

“Well, nobody even knows what you look like, first of all,” I tried explaining to him kindly- although, secretly, his narcissism was beginning to irk me, and, as he whined, my respect for him dwindled.

“AND THAT IS WHY I AM INFINITELY MORE INTERESTING THAN THESE HOES.”

Angelicism then charged me with the crime of “01 erasure,” whatever that means. I laughed it off.

“Ok, king. Sure,” I said, giggling to myself as I sent the message.

“DON’T ‘Ok, king’ ME” he demanded.

“Ok, king. Sure thing, king,” I repeated.

“What is wrong with you, stupid girl? Are you drunk?”

“No.”

“Then what is the matter? Why have you decided to treat me this way?”

“Treat you what way? - Like a king?” I asked, spamming him with crown emojis.

In response, he called me a “little slut” who is a “third of his age” that “does nothing.”

“That’s facts, king,” I replied, spasming with giggles, laid back in a lukewarm bubblebath.

“Why don’t you go join Remilia?” He insisted again, “Join Charlotte Fang and Soph and sell your pussy pics for NFTs. That would suit you better…I was trying to create something beautiful with you. I thought you understood that beauty. I thought you were beautiful, too. Turns out, I was wrong. You are very ugly, and you smile like a witch.”

When he blocked me this time, I smiled, like a witch.

Although I sensed that, this time, the severance may be permanent, in the moment, it mattered little to me. Now that I had a real-life lover, I no longer needed a pretend one.

Later that night, Dana, a former Angelicism01 fan, called me from Dubai. Dana had once conducted a long distance romantic relationship with Angelicism, similar to mine. It ended, years ago, with her getting blocked and scorned by him on Twitter. For a half hour we vented to each other about Jonty, trying to diagnose him with various personality disorders- Was he BPD? Bipolar? A narcissist?

“That guy really fits every single label in the DSM handbook, perfectly- like, he really just has every possible mental illness,” I concluded.

All the way in Dubai, Dana laughed. The service cut in and out, chopping up her chuckles.

“It still hurts, though-” Dana confessed, her voice growing suddenly somber, “The way he blocked me like that. It felt so… violent.”

“Angelicism is just a fat guy behind a computer,” I reminded her, “Shut your laptop and he drops dead.”

She laughed again, then the call cut out, and Dana was gone, and I was alone, sitting in the kitchen, in the dark, smiling like a witch.

***

The following evening, Chandler and I hung out again after work…

After several rounds of sex, I finally grew tired. He, however, wanted to keep going- which both amazed and frightened me. Clearly, his addictive personality was on display. He didn’t seem able to stop, so I had to stop him. I was bleeding, and it wasn’t even my period, I told him. We have to stop. So we stopped.

After scouring the white carpet for blood spots and finding none, we re-located to the shower and rinsed off.

“Bathtubs are so cinematic. Showers are cinematic, too,” Chandler observed.

“There’s a great shower sex scene at the beginning of Lars Von Trier’s AntiChrist,” I added.

“Haven’t seen it,” he said, “But we should try shower sex.”

“When?”

“Right now,” he declared.

We tried shower sex, but his dick kept slipping out of me. Too much soap, probably.

“This is advanced level fucking,” he announced, giving up, “But we’ll master it eventually.”

Chandler got out of the shower and wrapped himself in a towel, while I stayed in and continued to wash myself off.

“Sorry,” I apologized for no reason, “It’s just that I don’t have hot water at home, and this feels so luxurious.”

When he didn’t respond, I yanked the shower curtain aside and caught him staring, tearfully, at his own reflection, toothbrush in hand, held limply at his side.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, suddenly worried that I had offended him, though I couldn’t begin to understand how.

“Nothing,” he murmured.

Gazing over at his reflection, I saw that all of the life had drained out of his eyes, at once. It was as if, after coming five or six times, he had lost a vital part of himself- maybe it was his soul or his mind, or maybe it was his heart. Something was missing behind those dark eyes, which moments ago had been so animated with lust.

“Clearly, something is upsetting you. Is it something I said?” I asked, as my mood suddenly dampened as well- though, seconds before, I had been grinning compulsively, in a state of post-coital coziness.

“No, no, no. I just have to brush my teeth. That’s all,” he declared.

“Why? Is it because I taste bad?” I asked, growing self-conscious.

“No, it’s just a compulsion I have. To brush my teeth. It’s just something I do,” he explained as he turned on the sink and started to brush.

“That’s not why you’re upset, though? I can tell. Just tell me,” I begged him.

He foamed at the mouth, then spit.

“Alright.”

He spit again, then, paused to look at his solemn reflection. I got out of the shower, wrapped myself in a towel and stood behind him, watching his burdened brown eyes meet their own gaze, then roll over to meet my reflected eyes.

“Do you ever feel convicted?” he asked me in the mirror.

“Convicted?” I repeated, “Convicted of what? A crime?”

He turned away from our reflections and looked into my real eyes.

“You grew up Christian. You know what I mean,” he said.

“Do I feel guilty about premarital sex?” I asked, rephrasing his question.

“Do you feel convicted?” he repeated, shivering.

“No, not anymore,” I responded, softly, knowing exactly what he meant.

“Well, I do now,” he whispered, turning back to look himself in the eye, before wincing and looking away.

I followed him out of the bathroom, into the bedroom area- which wasn’t a real room, but a corner of the studio sectioned off by blackout curtains. On his nightstand, I noticed an open Bible next to a number of orange pill bottles, filled with various psychiatric medications, both uppers and downers. He laid down in his bed, and I sat beside him.

“We can’t have sex anymore,” he announced, tearfully, “I’m sorry.”

This came as a shock to me, and I wish I could say it didn’t hurt, but it did.

“I understand,” I said, though, honestly, I didn’t.

To my surprise and disappointment, Chandler insisted on driving me home, though it was already late and we were both naked in bed.

“I just don’t want to backtrack on the progress we just made,” he claimed.

I wanted to ask what he meant by “progress,” but I just agreed and kept quiet, as we both got dressed.

Clearly, he viewed me, not as a romantic prospect, not as a person, but as another addition to his long list of vices. “Progress” meant eliminating me from his life, little by little.

He wanted to be pure. Pure, he was not.

***

The next day at work, I stood behind the ticket counter with my co-worker, Lucy, a trans girl who had run away from her ultra-conservative family, and our other co-worker, Kayley, an intelligent actress, who I had instantly liked upon meeting. This was the perfect moment to spill the tea, I decided.

When the lobby was dead, I asked them, “Do you guys want to know something crazy?”

The girls perked up.

“Of course,” they replied, eager to be spared from mid-afternoon boredom.

“Ok. I’ve been hooking up with Chandler,” I announced.

Neither of them looked surprised, but their eyes urged me to continue.

“And he’s, like, crazy…” I continued, “He’s on this religious kick right now- I don’t know if you’ve noticed. But he just discovered Jesus, like a week ago, and now he suddenly believes that premarital sex is evil.”

“Girl, we already know that he’s crazy,” Lucy said, “Just look at his eyes.”

“What about his eyes?” I asked, naively.

“He’s got that psychopath stare,” added Kayley.

“He’s literally Patrick Bateman,” said Lucy. “That, and his favorite movies are Fight Club and Pulp Fiction, which should’ve been the first red flag.”

“Yeah, I guess I have a tendency to get dickmatized, and overlook these things,” I admitted.

“We’ve seen it happen before,” Kayley informed me, “Chandler has been bringing girls to this theater for almost a year now. Trust me- he can’t keep a girlfriend for more than a month. That’s how long it takes for them to see through the awkward pretty boy facade.”

“What’s underneath the facade?” I asked.

Lucy shrugged, “Probably nothing.”

“Ugh. I don’t know why I always fall for these Patrick Bateman-esque guys!” I exclaimed. “It’s like, I just want to peel back those beady psychopath eyes and see what’s really there. And I’m hoping for some pearl of kindness or the shell of a once-sweet boy, turned bitter by the world, but I peel them back, and there’s nothing there. Literally nothing.”

“And then you realize you wasted your time. When you could’ve been learning about yourself, instead,” Kayley said.

I realized she was right.

Why was I wasting time chasing after Born Again Christian dick, when

I AM INFINITELY MORE INTERESTING THAN THESE HOES?

(pic is me, by Connor Dobbin)

SCORCHED

I don’t believe in heaven, but I do believe in hell. I go to hell for eight hours everyday. If you think your 9 to 5 email job is hell, then go to hell and get back to me; I work at a factory. We make fiberglass exhausts.

I’m in hell right now. I am staring at a clock.

What is hell? The Christian definition doesn’t suffice. Hell isn’t a place you go after you die. Hell is a clock. I look at a clock and I want time to be over. Wanting time to be over and wanting to die are two distinct desires. Death is natural. Ending time, for everyone and everything, is not. No one should want time to end; The desire isn’t fucking natural. If no one had invented the clock, no one would want ~this~ to be over. Who invented the fucking clock anyways? Could someone go back in time and take that mf out? Honestly, sometimes, I think that the only useful human invention was the eraser. Actually, I don’t think we’ve invented it yet- The Eraser. Fires are sort of like erasers, when used destructively. Wait. Wasn’t fire, like, the first invention? It was all downstream after that… You can’t make a fiberglass exhaust without fire. Is that when we invented hell, with the first fire?

Interesting how our first invention came with a kill switch. With fire, you can either fuse two things together, or you can incinerate two things and turn them into no-thing. Every invention has two directions; There’s create mode and destroy mode; But there is only an illusion of choice between these two directions, because, ultimately, either movement will have an equal and opposite reaction. Both addition and subtraction are unifying. Even if we learn to pay backwards attention, the result is always the same, because as soon as we invented time, we invented an ending. Ever since we learned how to read, to read time, to absorb plotlines from left to right, we’ve been progressing backwards, hurtling toward an end, an end which we crave. We manufactured this craving. This craving isn’t natural. There was a time when things didn’t end, because they didn’t need to; But nobody can remember that amorphous era because nobody, at the time, knew how to read or write. Nobody, at the time, knew what time was, or had any instinct to look back.

I look back at the clock. Right now, in the factory, I crave that ending, knowing full well that it isn’t natural. When I look at the clock and resent the remnant hours of my shift, it isn’t death I crave, but extinction. Having a job in the middle of the seventh and final extinction event, when the world is setting itself ablaze- isn’t that… weird? Every shift, I think these thoughts and I give myself the creeps. It’s ninety-five fucking degrees, no ac, and yet, I keep shivering and I know that it’s not the weather, it’s the creeps.

I am different because I create; This is my sole consolation when I am at work. Nobody here knows that I am a photographer, except Claire. I take pictures of Claire. She is, by far, the prettiest girl in the factory. Claire wants to model. She’s open about her aspirations, much to her detriment. Our co-workers, the older ones, snicker at her. The brutal truth is this; Claire is beautiful within the context of the factory, but beautiful, only by juxtaposition.

I am different because I create. I am different because I want to create something beautiful. Some people are born with the instinct to replicate what is beautiful. We are rare. My coworkers do not share this instinct. Instead of creating, they channel all of their libidinal energy into bitterness and jealous scheming. Claire is the exception- Except, she has the desire to be replicated. Claire has an erotic aura. If you wish to have an aura of eroticism, you only have to desire to be replicated and the desire will ooze out of your pores and express itself, invisibly.

I have an instinct to identify what is beautiful and to replicate it. The instinct itself is beautiful. All that is beautiful deserves to be replicated. I deserve to be replicated. I deserve it. I desire it. My desire to be replicated communicates itself, invisibly. It is this invisible desirability that makes me the target of my co-workers’ snickering. They snicker out of fear. Subconsciously, they sense social-Darwinian competition. Deep down, they know that, when competing with an aesthete or a beautiful person, they will lose. However, the average ego isn’t strong enough to acknowledge this, so their subconscious filters out thoughts of inferiority, keeping them ignorant. When faced with beauty they can only babble “Huh? Huh? Wha?” Because beautiful people are beyond their comprehension. If they tried to dissect an erotic aura, their egos might literally combust. All they can do is snicker; And all I can do is understand that they don’t understand. I try to be as compassionate as possible to my co-workers, which only mystifies them further.

Factories are not beautiful; And yet, they are centers of replication. Fiberglass exhausts are un-beautiful, and yet, we mass produce them. Mass replication of the un-beautiful is perverse- evil, even. Why do we do it? What the fuck is wrong with people? What is the opposite of replication? What is an un-factory? I’d like to invent an un-factory of disassemblers to un-replicate all of this ugly machinery. I’d like to set shit on fire. Fire is beautiful. Everyone glows magnificently under flame-light. Sunlight, on the other hand, will expose your flaws. I can make an ugly thing beautiful by setting it on fire.

I have telekinesis. I have telekinesis. I have telekinesis. If I say a sentence three times, outloud, in my head, it will manifest itself; If I fixate on an object, I can make it combust; These are the laws of the universe; I can’t make this shit up.

If I space out hard enough, during my shift, I can really see the flames. The clock just combusted.

I tell Claire that she’s on fire. She smiles. She thinks I’m flirting. I’m not flirting, but it is better for her to think that than to know the truth (flames are devouring her.) Claire thinks that I want to replicate with her. Maybe it is best that she thinks that. Maybe I do. Under the flame-light, she looks beautiful. It puts her acne scars in the shadows, unifies her skin with a honey-colored glow.

“I want to invent an un-factory,” I say, my voice quivering, (the flames are eating at her hair.)

“Oh? What would that entail?” Claire smiles.

“Uhh. We uhh disassemble things. Or dissect organic matter. Uhhh. Like, I dunno. Uh, frogs. Or uhhhhhhhhhh”

“Frogs?”

“Yeah, uhhh. Frogs. Or, like, uhh, baby pigs, maybe.”

Claire’s skin changes texture under the heat. Her falsely-smooth matte foundation hardens into char. I retch a little.

“I uhhhh, I got to go…Haha.”

Claire raises her eyebrows, just as they singe off.

I dart towards the bathroom. Linda, my supervisor, stops me.

Linda looks like Genesis P Orridge. I tried to compliment her once by telling her so. Obviously, Linda had no idea who Genesis P Orridge was, so I pulled up google images. She didn’t see the resemblance. Ever since then, Linda has had it out for me.

“You have 15 minutes left of your shift. I’m sure your youthful-young bladder can hold it in,” Linda says.

There are flames reflecting in the blacks of her pupils. I finally recognize Linda for what she truly resembles- not Genesis P Orridge, but the devil.

I walk back to my station.

Behind me, Claire chuckles. “Youthful-young bladder?”

I don’t look at Claire. I smell burning flesh. I try not to breathe. I can’t not breathe for fifteen minutes. In my head, I try to calculate how many times I can say fifteen in fifteen minutes. If saying fifteen takes a second, then fifteen times sixty is nine hundred. Saying ‘fifteen’ isn’t precisely a second. It’s probably less, depending on how fast you say it. That’s another factor. I don’t know if I can say fifteen at exactly the same speed each time. Variations are inevitable, unless I record my voice. Fifteen, fifteen, fifteen, etc. The number disintegrates into a word, which disintegrates into pure sound. You can’t escape time by counting, I’ve discovered; But you can escape time by repeating a single number infinitely. This is how you exit hell: fifteen, fifteen, fifteen, etc.

The bell rings. The clock un-combusts. Claire, with her hair and skin intact, looks astonishingly less beautiful. My desire to replicate her has gone extinct. I take off my blue plastic work uniform and slip on my hoodie. Nobody knows this, shhhh, but my hoodie is Margiela. Nobody knows this, shhhh, but my paint-splattered jeans are archival Helmut Lang, from the 90s. Nobody knows and nobody cares. This gives me a singular, private delight.

I walk out of the building, in sync with Claire. The sky is ghoulish purple. The clouds are black. A Halloween sky; It’s late july. It must be Halloween. Claire is wearing an Exorcist II T-shirt.

“Do you want to go to the graveyard and get shit-faced?” She asks.

I stop. I say nothing. I pull my camera out of my backpack and take pictures of the sky.

Claire steps in front of the lens. She smiles.

“You’re insane,” I say.

“You can take pictures of me with just my bra on. I’ve got a new bra, one you’ve never seen before. It looks like sea shells. All glittery. Oh- and I’ve got these vampire teeth. Got them from one of those gumball machines at Hannaford’s.”

She sticks her tongue out, in front of the lens. I cringe.

“No,” I say, “You’re insane.”

“Why am I insane?”

“Because we’re 27, Claire. I don’t want to go to the cemetery. I don’t want to get shit-faced. If I wanted to get shit-faced, I would go to a bar, not the cemetery.”

I don’t want to get drunk with Claire, but I acquiesce. We go to a local goth bar called Wake the Dead.

In the factory, Claire is an object of fantasy. In the outside world, she doesn’t interest me. Claire is just another blue-haired girl waiting to be served a gin and tonic at Wake The Dead. Claire is every girl who dyed her hair blue in order to become more singular, winding up universal instead, blending further into neon homogeny.

She opens her blistered little mouth to speak. My glass fantasies crack.

I can’t afford for my fantasy to be fucked with. Not when I’m at a shift and six inches away from going ballistic and chopping off my own dick. It’s paradoxical, I know, but the only thing tethering my brain to reality is this slim fantasy; Not of fucking Claire, but of reinventing her.

At the bar, we sit across from each other at a small table. There’s a candle between us. As we wait for our drinks, neither of us speak. I pick up a napkin and start to shred it into little pieces. Claire watches as I blow the bits of paper into the candle. I smile at the candle as they burn.

Finally, Claire asks, “What are you doing?”

I don’t respond, instead, I repeat myself- “We’re 27, Claire. We’ve been legal drinking age for what? Six years? I don’t want to manufacture a false sense of taboo anymore. If taboos are your thing, go break a real one. Like, go fuck your twin sister. I don’t care. But drinking at the cemetery doesn’t do it for me anymore. It’s been lackluster for a minute. Everything’s been lackluster. Apart from self-immolation, I can’t think of a single thing that could sufficiently stimulate me right now. I’ve already tried every drug and every sex position, so what is the fucking point, Claire? There’s nothing new under the fucking sun. There’s only replication. Everything I create is a picture of something that already exists. I could take a picture of you, but I didn’t fucking make you. Not even you made you. So what is the fucking point?”

Claire looks down at her drink, stirs the ice cubes around with her straw. I continue to shred my napkin.

“I don’t know,” she says softly, “I think there’s plenty of newness, all of the time. People are always inventing new drugs and new sex positions. People reinvent themselves with every breath. Our brains our constantly re-wiring, and-”

“Not after twenty-five,” I add, “But, continue.”

“Our personalities are still malleable after twenty-five, just less so.”

“Yes, but nothing is really a novelty anymore.”

I blow a clump of larger-sized napkin fragments into the candle and watch the flame jump higher and higher.

“Seriously, why do you keep doing that?” Claire looks back at the bar, concernedly. “You’re going to get us kicked out. This is, like, autistic child behavior.”

I don’t respond. I just smile.

“Maybe you just need to travel,” Claire continues, “Travelling is stimulating. It’s healthier than drugs, sex, or- ” She glances down at the now-surging flame. “self-immolation.”

“I don’t need to travel to know that there’s nothing new under the sun. I don’t leave the country. I don’t have to. There are no more frontiers. Every place is the same, due to globalization. They play the same Drake song in every supermarket from Montreal to Vietnam. Everywhere is America. Everywhere is the internet. All of the culture on the internet is downstream from New York. Everyone in New York has been regurgitating the same pop art aesthetics for the past five decades. Name one subculture that isn’t derivative. You can’t! Because all of it is the same thing! There aren’t any differences! No borders, no outlines, no distinctions, no categories. There’s no difference between any two things, any infinite number of un-named things. It all blurs together. One giant unnamed mass grave. We may as well give up on language.”

“For someone who wants to give up on language, you seem to have a lot to say,” Claire scoffs.

“All of my emotions have boiled down to the same nebulous non-feeling,” I continue, “There’s no point in expressing it. There aren’t any words for it. I can only hope that, as soon as someone invents a word for it, this non-feeling will exorcize itself. There is no variety anymore, no disturbances. It’s as if variety multiplied itself exponentially, then killed itself. Now everything is the same thing.”

I sigh. Claire stares at her drink again. We’re both silent for a minute.

“Well, I’m moving to New York,” she declares.

“You’re leaving?” I ask, incredulous.

“I’m moving to New York, to experience newness, all of the time. I only wanted to get shitfaced at the cemetery as a tribute to all the other times we’ve done it. It would’ve been new, in spite of all the times we’ve done it, because it would’ve been the last time. It would’ve been different,” she says.

I take an enormous gulp of my whiskey sour, then slam the glass on the table.

“Well, good luck chasing novelty in New York, bitch. Why don’t you join the parade of hopelessly mid downtown clout whores? Seriously, I hope it finds you. Best of luck.”

“Thanks.”

Claire looks down at her empty drink.

“What are you even going to do in New York?”

“Model,” she nearly-whispers.

Claire’s voice is trembling with vulnerability. I order another drink, so as to not feel too guilty. I am not jealous, I tell myself, Claire simply needs a reality check.

“You’re twenty-seven, Claire,” I tell her.

“There are plenty of twenty-seven-year-old models.”

“Yeah. They started in their teens. You’re twenty-seven, Claire. You have blue hair. You’re five foot four-”

“Five foot six,” she interrupts, on the verge of tears.

“You really think you will just walk around New York and someone will just pick you out of the crowd and scout you? Go join the masses of beautiful people who all want the same thing. Do it. There’s no point. Even if you were to get scouted, you would still be dime a dozen. It won’t make you singular or unusual.”

“I have a babyface, an unusual one! A face that strangers stare at for unusually long.”

“Sure, age is subjective, but-” I start.

Claire is shaking and crying. I grimace slightly, feeling the guilt creep in.

“I’m going to close out now,” she declares, abruptly getting out of her chair.

“Wait.” Claire turns to leave. I grab her hand. “I know I sound harsh, but-”

“I thought you would support me! Nobody at the factory believes in what I’m capable of. I thought you were different! Turns out you’re just as bitter as the rest of them. Those nobodies! Those NPCs! Get your hand off me!”

She shakes my grip off her wrist.

“I’ll show you! All show all of them what Clarita is capable of!”

“Clarita?”

“My model name.”

“Jesus Christ. Maybe pick something different.”

“Do you know about Marilyn Monroe?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“Jesus Christ, Claire. I mean, uh, Claire-eee-tah. Yeah I know who Marilyn fucking Monroe was.”

“Ok, well. They say, after she became famous, she could turn her glamor on and off, like a switch. She could switch from Marilyn back to Norma Jean Baker in an instant, without ever having to change her clothes or makeup. She could go to bars unrecognized, but the instant she wanted to be seen, she could simply switch on the facade. She has complete control over her glamourousness. So, who’s to say that I’m not like that as well? Maybe I simply haven’t switched myself on. Once I do, everyone will see it.”

“What is ‘It?’”

“The novelty of me. My eternal newness of life. This new me that’s entirely of my own invention.”

I watch as she stumbles towards the bar. That’s when I see it- Her singularity. Clairita switches on. She illuminates, turning into a fiery angel-demon of newness and light. Like a fly drawn to a candle, I have no choice but to pull my camera out of the bag and pin her down in this instant. Suddenly, I don’t doubt her potential.

There are two kinds of people; Those who watch movies, and those who live them.

I once told this to Angelicism01.

“I am living one,” I declared in our dms, “While you are watching them, sitting on the couch like the fat ass loser that you are.”

“You are a narcissist,” he countered, “If you think your life is interesting enough for people to watch.”

“Well, you’re watching, aren’t you?” I asked.

“I am, and I’m terribly bored.”

***

After Chandler took me to Chipotle, he drove us to his apartment.

Parked in his car, he froze for a moment, looking conflicted. I asked him if he was ok.

“I’m ok,” he said, “It’s just, uhm- there’s something really weird in my apartment that I forgot about, and now I’m kinda embarrassed for you to see it.”

“I won’t judge you,” I assured him.

“It’s like really, really weird, though- It’s like, so weird I wouldn’t judge you for judging me for it,” he explained, sighing.

“Well, can you describe it a bit? To mentally prepare me?” I asked.

“Well, I’ve been redecorating lately, and I remembered an idea I once had in college- I was extremely high,” he started before cutting himself off- “Ugh, you’re just going to have to see it, I guess. It’s too weird to explain.”

“Alright,” I said, unbuckling my seatbelt and easing myself out of the Tesla.

At the time, I thought that whatever it was, it would either not be weird at all, or it would be like a dead body or something. Either way, I was excited to find out.

When Chandler opened the door to his studio apartment, I noticed nothing odd, apart from the fact that it was neurotically clean and smelled like Febreeze. A ginormous Donnie Darko poster leaned against the wall.

“Is this what you’re embarrassed about?” I asked, pointing at the poster.

“No, no. Not that! Haha. That’s my pride and joy!” he exclaimed, “It’s too big to fit on the wall, though. So I’m saving it for when I get an even bigger apartment.”

I looked around, realizing that I’d never been in a studio apartment so spacious and clean. The kitchen sparkled, as if it had never been used.

“There’s no way you can afford this by working at AFS,” I laughed.

“My parents-” he started.

“Love you,” I finished, as I slipped off my shoes.

My eyes drifted, for the first time, to the wall above his bed, which was painted baby blue. A series of tapestries hung above the bedframe, depicting scenes from Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, including a life-size, screen-printed still of Tom Cruise weeping over a bed.

“Yeah, that’s what I was worried about,” Chandler said, growing red.

“It’s a little weird, but, I mean, I like Eyes Wide Shut, and I get it,” I said, trying to be nice, as I held in a giggle. “Where did you even get it from?”

“Shutterstock,” he replied, “I know, it was a crazy idea, right? But it looks good, right?”

“Right. Looks good,” I lied, smiling as I choked down my laughter.

Chandler pulled a chair out for me at the kitchen table; I sat down.

“Do you want anything? A seltzer or something?” he offered.

“Do you have any alcohol? I could honestly use a drink,” I said.

I observed his face flinch, as he opened the refrigerator.

“Oh shit!” I exclaimed, remembering, “I’m so sorry! I forgot you were sober!”

“Yeah, sorry. I don’t really think I’m strong enough to watch someone else get drunk, yet,” he said, sadly, as he placed two peach-flavored Waterloos on the table.

“It’s ok, I don’t need it,” I said- Though, really, I wanted alcohol more than anything at that moment- I knew that it would be the perfect antidote to our awkwardness. Suddenly, I recalled that I had a tiny bottle of Tito’s in my bag. Dismissing myself to the bathroom, I pocketed the vodka and downed it, rinsing out my mouth with his mouthwash three times, in order to mask the smell.

Maybe Chandler wasn’t ready to be sober in front of a drunk person, but I certainly wasn’t ready to be sober in front of a sober person. I returned to the table, already a bit tipsy. He didn’t seem to notice the difference- though, immediately, I felt my tongue grow looser. Soon enough, I was carrying the conversation and he seemed entranced- eyes wide, as he lingered on my every word.

“I’m in a movie,” I told him, “And I think that the director is going to be the next Godard. He’s like the Godard of the YouTube poop era. And I’m his Anna Karina.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s called Angelicism01, and he’s not a ‘he,’ technically, but an ‘it.’ Nobody really knows who or what it is. Except for me. I figured it out- Angelicism’s dead name. And now that I know the name, I can control its narrative. I want to be the one to tell the Angelicism01 story.”

“What’s the story? If I may ask?”

“It’s the story of a broken man. A voice without a body,” I started, then paused.

“Go on,” Chandler urged, as his right leg bobbed up and down beneath the table, motored by either anxiety or excitement- I couldn’t tell.

“A man who hates himself so much that he cleanses himself of his identity in order to become a post-identity entity,” I continued.

“Wait,” he interrupted, his handsome face scrunching up in confusion- “What do you mean by ‘post-identity entity’?”

“I mean, something that has given up their singularity, so that they are no longer an individual defined by their differences,” I explained.

He nodded then said, “Ah, yes- We talk about this in AA sometimes- About relinquishing our individuality to a higher power. Is that what you’re talking about?”

“Yes, sort of…This is the story of a man who relinquishes the weight of his body in order to merge his consciousness with the internet. Once he does so, he finds himself so light and free, like an angel!.... And like all angels, he sends messages. At the speed of light, he talks to girls in New York, appearing, at once, projected into their bedrooms. And with his beautiful words, he makes them fall in love with him. Then, he realizes, with a bit of money, he can make them do anything. He can control them, remotely. And, so, from across the Atlantic, Angelicism plays with his dolls, breaking and discarding them as he pleases.”

“He’s sort of like a Manson-figure, then?” Chandler asked.

“Yes, like Manson, but different- Because no matter how powerful Angelicism becomes, he is never really there. He can love his girls, manipulate them, but he can never touch them. Nor set foot in the city he dreams of. Because his body is gone, and he only lives in other people’s heads.”

“Why do the girls obey him then? Can’t they just block him and touch grass and move on with their lives?” he asked.

I paused for a second, thinking before responding, then continued, “That’s the power of fantasy. He didn’t just choose normal girls to talk to, he found dreamy ones- Online girls who already lived in denial of reality. Girls who wanted to escape. He was their ticket out of the midwest, out of Texas, or wherever they came from.”

“Is that what you are? An escapist?”

“Yes,” I replied, “An escapist. An escape artist.”

“Me too,” he said, “That’s why I liked drugs so much.”

“Drugs and movies,” I said, smiling up at him, quickly, then glancing away.

“Speaking of movies- Should we watch one?” he suggested, gesturing towards the large flatscreen TV in his living room.

I said sure. Then we migrated over to his couch, sitting on opposite ends. Chandler scrolled through the Criterion Collection, until he came across a series of erotic thrillers. We decided on a Paul Schrader movie that neither of us had seen called The Comfort of Strangers. In retrospect, I don’t remember much about the movie- I believe it had vague sadomasochistic themes, but I recall feeling let down by a lack of eroticism. In a rare reversal, I felt that my immediate, physical reality was more interesting than the drama acted out on screen, and I was a bit distracted by Chandler’s arm, which inched towards me over the course of two hours, and, by the credit sequence had found its way, draping itself over my neck. Once the movie was over, we turned to each other and kissed, again and again. His kisses were sweet, unlike those of some of the boys of my past, who kissed too hungrily and greedily, like dogs. Gradually, without any words, we took off our matching work uniforms- maroon t-shirts that still smelled of popcorn and canola oil- casting them onto the carpet. We made precarious love on the couch, then the floor, then the bed. And after we finished, he lent me his robe and we smoked cigarettes on his balcony and talked about other people at work.

“Do you think they will be able to tell?” I asked him, giggling.

“I think they already have their suspicions,” he replied, smiling with a cigarette on his lips, “Plus, we both have to work in the morning…”

“At least it will give us something to think about when shit gets boring,” I said, “That’s why I always end up fucking my co-workers… It’s the only thing that makes work bearable.”

In my peripheral, I watch Ava. From this angle, her profile is eclipsed by thick side bangs. Still, I study her automatically, matching her micro-movements without choosing to. She draws her breath in and out at a rabbit’s pace, and so do I. Ava’s sitting at the desk adjacent to mine, like always. If her presence were removed from the edge of my vision, my world would spin off its axis, and all my vital undulations would halt; no more heart beat, no more rabbit breath. I’d unlearn it all.

Right now, we’re in French class. I don’t speak French, or English, though I understand the mechanics of both languages perfectly. I have selective mutism. Shallow highschool teachers and guidance counselors often mistake it for a learning disability, but they misunderstand me. I am perfectly able to talk, I have the vocal cords, the words, the confidence. It’s a choice I make deliberately. Silent air is unpolluted air. Too many people waste their breath, their time, saying what doesn’t need to be said, adding to a toxic verbal sewage that clouds people’s attention and generates unnecessary discord. Animals aren’t eroding the planet, and that’s because they don’t talk.

I love shutting the fuck up, so does Ava. Silence is an activity, like reading, that gets mislabeled as passive. Free of cluttered speech, the two of us soak in subtler information and remember it eidetically. We don’t need language to influence an outcome.

Ava is my exception and I am hers. We talk to each other in our shared twin-speak which our child psychologist, Mrs. Donovan, in a moment of professional epiphany, discovered to be a sped up version of English, made lipsy by our candy-colored braces. When Ava and I speak, our tongues flutter and flick and we take pleasure in our mutual private reality. If a normie wanted to eavesdrop on our hyper-chatter they would only have to make a recording then slow it down. I’ve caught our mother, audio recorder in hand, standing outside our bedroom door, attempting this several times.

There’s a copy of Breaking Dawn wedged inside my French textbook. My only consolation in life and death is that Ava has an identical copy under the cover of hers. In perfect synchronicity, we read about werewolves and vampires, both of which are real entities creeping around the woods of our Pennsylvania hometown.

We don’t need to exchange looks to exchange looks. When a line of the text makes Ava’s lips tilt up or wilt down I know without watching, because I feel my mouth being tugged in the same direction. Ava was born ten minutes ahead, so I am the delayed one, the imitator, trapped in repetition.

When Miss Tremblay, our young Canadian teacher, starts her daily quiz, asking the class, “Quelle est la date aujourd’hui?” a dozen hands shoot up. Miss Tremblay doesn’t call on any of our classmates, because she is obsessed with pestering Ava, trying to get her to speak.

“Ava. Quelle est la date aujourd’hui?” she repeats.

Ava looks up from Breaking Dawn. I do the same. She hits Miss Tremblay with an empty glare.

“La date?” Tremblay insists, lifting her eyebrows and pointing to the date written on the whiteboard. Her condescension is heavy, but there’s a minor shimmer of fear in her question.

I eye the faded coffee stain on the left breast of Tremblay’s button-up, a stray translucent hair on her lip, and a single, premature gray hair spiking out of her pixie cut. I pity her and her disarray. She wouldn’t be so ugly if she only knew how to pay attention. I lower my gaze and retreat back into the book, our lips crawling upwards.

We’ve succeeded in freaking her out, that dumb cunt.

Miss Tremblay gives Ava a break and calls on Sophie, the bubbly blonde bitch who always knows basic information and tries to flaunt her grasp of a surface-level interpretation. Everyone adores her, except Ava and I, but of course she doesn’t know that.

“C’est le mercredi, 12 décembre 2012,” Sophie answers. Her lips fill to the brim with glossy satisfaction.

Tremblay squeals out an over-enthusiastic “oui, oui!”

“C’est un jour très spécial!” she claims.

12/12/12.

Aren’t we so lucky to be alive to see the calendar numbers align in such a satisfying way? It’s too bad that, unless bitten by a vampire, none of us will live to see it happen again.

Ava’s gaze keeps flicking out of her book to our left, her 10 o’clock, where Nathan sits. She lifts a can of rainbow unicorn energy drink to her lips. I take a sip. Then, she stares into the back of his neck with an intensity strong enough to trigger spontaneous combustion.

Nate has one of those faces that could be anyone’s face, like the face of a passing stranger in the mall who you never consciously observed, and, yet, his likeness has been recycled in your dreams ever since, used to fill in extras. If you googled “face,” he would appear as a stock image with a watermark, and that’s exactly the sort of thing that I’m attracted to.

He’s wearing a heather gray sweatshirt. So anonymity-core. Ava and I have our uniform, matching black hoodies, and black skinny jeans worn in order to resist interpretation while still conveying our vague depression and unapproachability.

Nate is a blank slate, and that’s why I’m in love with him, because he’s everything and nothing in an instant and will be for eternity. Of course, Ava gets the desk closer to his and the better view of his neck, that freaking whore.

Looking at my twin triggers me. I get these intrusive thoughts, wondering whether I’m hot-or-not. It’s hard to distinguish between ugly-hot, atypically-hot, and universally-hot. One time I hired a hotness consultant off the internet, a 40-year-old guy from Estonia, and sent him nude pictures of both of us. He ranked Ava a half a point above me, which is impossible. I tried it again with a different consultant and got the same results.

Identical penny-colored bangs frame both our faces but our freckles form different constellations. Mine are in all the wrong places. She has an emerald freckle in her right iris that gives her eye the eternal animation of a Blingee sparkle. Maybe it’s that. Maybe it’s her charisma of being first that I lack. Whatever it is, it isn’t fair.

I haven’t been paying attention. Miss Tremblay orders the class to flip to the Natural Disasters chapter. Amid the dutiful flipping, Ava slams her textbook shut, letting Breaking Dawn slip out. She grabs the energy drink and gulps the rest of it down, places it in front of her, then crushes the pink-and-blue can between her hands. The class pauses their flipping to stare, as Ava tosses the metal disc across the room. Though it nearly grazes a few ducked heads, the can lands in the trash with graceful accuracy. All eyes on her, Ava gets up and crosses the room, heading towards the door.

Miss Tremblay is trembling.

“Where are you going?” she asks.

Ava responds with a slow eye roll, facing the class, as she pushes herself out the door.

Knowing that I have to, I get up and follow her, bringing my drink with me.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Tremblay demands, her pixie cut quivering, “There’s no way you two have to use the bathroom at the same time, every time. Sit down.”

I flash my pink tongue at her and shove through the door.

I find Ava in the handicapped stall, our favorite. I don’t knock before entering. She never locks it. Ava greets me in twin speak as she finishes pissing with her skinny jeans wrapped around her ankles. I don’t respond.

“What’s wrong with you? Why so shell-shocked?”

Ava mock-smiles.

I punish her with silence. I know that she is dying to talk and that I’m the only person she can exchange language with.

“Stop staring at me as if you’ve never seen me pee before!”

She’s faking annoyance, but mine is real. I turn around and face the corner of the stall.

“Alyssa, quit being a freak and speak up.”

Though I can’t see it, the weight of her sardonic grin brands itself onto the back of my neck.

“Your turn,” she says.

We switch places. I squat above the toilet, slither down my jeans, but hold in my piss.

“You want me to quit looking at him. What’s-his-name?”

We lock eyes, interrogating each other. As I watch her right eye glint, a violent urge surges through my body, a desire to pluck out her animated freckle and drown it like a deer-tick.

I keep my face blank, my body still, but she succeeds in reading me anyway.

“Well, I have a better idea,” Ava announces, “Why don’t we just share him, the way we share everything?”

I let the piss trickle out.

“Fine,” I say. Of course, she knows I’m lying.

“At least we’re not siamese twins. We don’t have to use him at the same time,” she says, as she takes an indigo sharpie out of her hoodie and starts to write equations on the grime-lined tiles of the bathroom wall.

“His name is Nate.”

She adds a capital N to her equation.

“This isn’t Twilight, you know,” she tells me, “I may have seen a real-life vampire, but I’ve never seen a girl with two boyfriends. Mathematically impossible.”

“Not if we duplicate him. Not if you’re subtracted from the equation. Not if…”

“Not if,” Ava interrupts, as she continues to write, “We are of equal value and we divide ourselves by each other to equal one.”

“And then what?” I yank up my jeans, struggling to get them over my thighs because they are so freaking tight. They cut off the blood flow in my legs, causing an ever-present tingling sensation at my ankles, a masochistic pleasure. It must be akin to autoerotic asphyxiation but I wouldn’t know.

“Coupling will become possible,” Ava says, touching the marker cap to the tip of her lip and holding it pensively like a cigarette. She stares beyond the illuminated slits where the plastic stall wall doesn’t quite meet the tile, into the adjacent stall, where an unsuspecting pisser surely senses the heat of her twinkling gaze.

What an invasive bitch, always penetrating everybody’s eye sockets and hardcore judging them. I can’t stand my sister behaving all stoic and hypercritical, so I lunge into action. I strike-out, viper-like, smacking the marker off her lip. Ava remains unfazed, as if she saw it coming, and continues to stare without blinking.

Triggered, I pick up the marker, which has warily rolled an inch into the next-door stall, and uncap it. The cap plops into the toilet water. I shove Ava by her shoulder with my empty hand. Her spine thuds against the wall. She pushes back. Her freckle-face scrunching up with effort. Being of equal strength, we reach a stalemate. Neither of us can move the other. I arch my left hand over her head, wielding the marker. As I start to drag it down onto her skin Ava snaps into a frenzy of defense. She scratches me. Despite having the flimsy fingernails of an anemic, she leaves a series of red semi-circles near my collarbone.

“You’re completely ratchet sometimes, you know that?” She says, kneeing me in the stomach and shoving me off. I yelp, sounding muted, like a drowning kitten in a velvet bag.

Ava swaggers out of the stall. “What did you even draw on me, huh?”

She peers into the crusty mirror and sees the blue line racing from her widow’s peak to the space between her eyes.

“Oh,” she smiles, “A number one? Exactly my point, Alyssa.”

I join her in the mirror. My face is her face is mine, but mine is frowning deeply, and she is laughing like a fucking maniac, smearing hand soap onto her forehead.

***

It’s lunchtime. The semi-circles on my neck still sting. I refuse to sit with Ava at our usual table, so I spot What’s-His-Face. Nate.

The cafeteria is located in the school’s basement. It’s dim with a dungeon aura. The fluorescent lights are muted and flickering, perpetually at the end of their lives. There are white, cascading banners hanging from the ceilings. Milk advertisements. Each one says “Got Milk?” on it and features a celebrity brandishing a milk mustache.

No one in this backwards town is capable of paying attention. Anyone with half a brain can see that Got Milk? ads are damningly pornographic, designed to stir up the hormones of recent puberty victims. Looking at the banners, us teens get our first whiff of nostalgia. We start to crave our mother’s milk. Our liquid brains form links between milk and metamorphosis and facial hair and mealtime and celebrity and sex. The brand strategy is genius.

If a parent or teacher finally noticed the obvious, they would find their conservative sensibilities disturbed. Not only are they too stupid see the wires of mass-manipulation techinique running through every corner of their lives, but they are also incapable of appreciating the sexual electricity of such a disturbance. Personally, I seek refuge in celebrity faces.

There’s a milk-mustachioed Taylor Swift, Olsen twins, and a pre-pubescent Justin Bieber. Underneath the Miley Cyrus banner, Nate is sitting alone. As I make my way towards him we link looks for a split-second before I sink my gaze into the plastic table. I place my sequin-embellished lunchbox in front of me, feeling a tinge of an embarrassment for it, as I sit down across from him. One corner of Nate’s mouth twists upward, causing a dimple to deepen. The dimple is poking fun at me. I still can’t recognize his face as the sum of its parts.

“Hey, Ava,” he greets me with my sister’s name.

I narrow my eyes and shake my head.

“Oh,” he says, “You’re the other one.”

I nod slowly and release an extended, dramatic sigh. The metal clasps of the lunch box click as I pry them open and take out an apple with more bruises than my fucked-up knees. My teeth scrape through the skin and into the apple’s mushy underworld. It tastes like chalk.

“So you’re, like, a mute?”

I nod. The apple rot is making me gag a little, so I spit chunks of the brown slush into a napkin.

“Cool. I hate talkers,” he says, as he observes my gagging.

I remove the nastified napkin from my mouth, not bothering to conceal its contents. Then I watch as his veiny fingers unfold the top of a strawberry milk carton. His veins are amazingly protruded, like a puffed up tangle of blue wires. I envy the cardboard as it touches his lips.

“Did a cataclysmic event silence you?” he asks.

The creativity of his question both pleases me and catches me off guard. I feel my freckles glittering as I smile and shake my head. His dimple reveals itself again.

I break our moment of reciprocated grinning to look up at the Miley Cyrus banner, because, in my periphery, I swear I saw her milk-crusted lips animate into a venomous chuckle. With not just any venom, but Ava’s. I don’t need to look over my shoulder to know that my sister is sitting behind me, a couple tables back, glaring and already orchestrating some upcoming destructive act.

Nate notices that my head is tilted up at the banner, at the portrait of Miley as an innocent country girl, in a tight white tank and short shorts, her legs spread slightly apart.

“You scared of the lactational propaganda?” He asks.

I shrug.

“I am,” he says, “They drug the milk here, for sure. It’s like Moloko Plus, except it makes us docile and sterile. Milk to mellow us out. No more school shootings, no more teen pregnancy. Two birds killed, one stone.”

I laugh a little, finding Nate suspiciously intelligent. There’s no way he isn’t a reflection of my own mind. I had to have invented him. No one compatible with me, besides Ava, exists.

Suddenly the marks left by Ava’s nails shiver with renewed pain. I shift my chest-length hair behind my shoulder and brush my fingertips against the aching spots. I wince, somewhat performatively.

“Did someone bite you?”

Nate’s question is void of concern. He smiles wider this time. I can see his teeth peaking out, a glossy set of carnivorous instruments. I don’t nod or shake my head. Instead, I look deep into his eyes, which are gray and wide-set, strangely like mine and my sister’s. Through this eye contact, a flash of ecstasy is transferred between us. The transaction is not romantic. There’s no wholesome, shared sparkle of understanding. I don’t know him. All this gazing amounts to a simple exchange.

In fact, the less I know, the better. He is just a crush, an abstract goal. A crush is just an opportunity that gets crushed when you open the door. It’s the only untainted stage of any relationship. A crush is so killable. If I got to know Nate, the crushing phase would crack and hatch into a more complex relationship, one which would involve attachment, a series of shared emotional extremes, then a devastating process of detachment. What proceeds the initial phase is rarely worth it.

I haven’t unlocked the key to immortality or the unraveling of time yet, but there is one thing that I have discovered precociously- a method for sustaining the crush phase and extending, for an infinity or a lifespan, that ecstatic initial feeling of fascination for an unfamiliar person. Don’t you envy amnesiacs for their ability to live in the beginning forever? I do. For amnesiacs, every song would preserve that strange charm that fades after the first listen. Every face would remain a blank slate, beaming with potential. Every kiss would be a first kiss and you could lose your virginity for the thousandth time.

I don’t want to be immortal, sounds like hell. My theory of hell is that it is a state of knowing everything. It’s when you are trapped in an eternity where time still progresses linearly, but without end, which causes you to feel the exponentially heavy boredom of everything you already know being repeated. Obviously, this would be unbearable. This is also why vampires are soooooo post-suicidal. They have to endlessly mourn their inability to die. There’s nothing new under the sun and that’s why sun and light in general are sheer torture to them.

In this case, the opposite of hell is not-knowing. If you want to live with the everlasting sense of everything being new, you simply have to not-know. In the case of crushing, it’s easy. You preserve it by not talking to your crush, forgetting him, and failing to recognize him. You see him walking down the hall, past your locker, and your only thoughts are “Huh? What? Who?” In the confusion, you get a burst of infantile wonder, and you think “Where do I know you from? The future, maybe.”

Not everyone can look a person in the eye without developing an emotional bond, I’m exceptionally talented in that department. I know, better than most, how to not-know. Nate and I are still locked in our gazing. Whatever depth was hidden behind his eyes, whatever information, I’ve now sucked it clean out and disposed of it. The exchange is more of a robbery. I wait for one of us to look away.

It’s Nate who breaks it, but it’s Ava’s fault, that attention whore. He looks past my shoulder, at her.

“Don’t look now, but your sister-” he starts.

Acting on a sudden instinct, I duck my head down. I feel a rush of air on my neck as an object flies over me. I hear the satisfying sound of Nate catching it. When I raise my head, I see Ava’s half-eaten apple resting in his palms.

I whip my body backwards, so I can view Ava’s smug little grin, complete with that singular, sparkling pupil. I shoot her a snarl and flip her off.

When the bell rings, signaling that lunch has ended, Nate gets up, dizzy and stumbling a bit. He doesn’t bother to wait for me.

I linger in the cafeteria, until it’s just the two of us. Ava approaches me and hovers over my shoulder briefly, before whispering, in twinspeak, “Just testing your reaction time. You’re improving. Maybe someday I’ll be the slow one.”

“Bitch,” I say.

Her expression darkens into a sneer.

“Do I need to remind you? You’re excessive. You’re, like, a clone. You’re so extra. What do you bring to the world that I don’t already? Nothing. So why do you even exist?”

I lift up my foot and stomp down on her toes in a swift motion sped up by anger. To my surprise and satisfaction, her reaction time is too slow, and Ava gets hurt.

“Insecure bitch,” I say, and I leave her there, wounded. I walk to class.

On March 8, 2023, I was working at Austin Film Society. Throughout my shift, I was distracted by the constant buzzing of my phone. Angelcisim01 was blowing up my Instagram dms, accusing me of liking a tweet posted by Charlotte Fang, one of his many opps.

When the guests had finally stopped filtering into the theater to see the latest Wes Anderson movie, I messaged 01 back, hiding, with my phone, behind the popcorn machine. At first, I tried to reason with him.

“You have so many opps,” I texted, “I lost track. Sorry. I thought you and Charlotte were good. Will unlike the tweet.”

When I didn’t unlike the tweet, he messaged back five minutes later- “You lying cunt.”

I unliked the tweet and replied, “I’m no liar. See for yourself.”

Instead of apologizing, he wrote, “I like it when you lie.” Then, “I only think of fucking you and you holding my dick.”

Thirty minutes later, he was angry again, this time, because I didn’t repost the trailer for his upcoming movie.

“So I see you’ve become an opp. So I see you’re Charlotte Fang’s girl now,” he messaged, “Have fun in Remilia. I hear they treat women well.”

“Look,” I said in a voice message, “I have a job. Something you might not understand, since you’ve never had one. I didn’t see that you posted the trailer yet because I was too busy cleaning the skittles out of movie theater seats. If I had seen it, I would’ve reposted it. Calm down.”

“U know wat?” he shot back.

“Wat?” I asked.

“I think ur just jealous,” he texted.

“Jealous of wat?”

“Jealous that I’ve made a movie, and you’ve made nothing. Nor will you ever. You will probably be cleaning skittles out of movie theater seats, scrubbing toilets, toiling away at your stupid ‘job’ for the rest of your miserable life you lazy, lowIQ whore,” he messaged, then unsent.

This struck a nerve with me. Truly, I was afraid he was right. That I’d never finish anything. That I’d work minimum wage jobs requiring janitorial tasks forever. Suddenly, I became flush with a desire to prove him wrong.

“Jealous?” I texted, adding a laughing cat emoji, “ I am going to film a movie, write a novel, build an empire, all before I’m half your age!... I’ll fuck thousands of dicks bigger and more magnificant than yours! Why on earth would I be jealous of you? You live with your parents and you’re almost fifty- Pathetic! Plus, you’re fat and ugly and old. You’ve never held a job for longer than a month… Who, between the two of us, is the biggest loser? Not me! I have all the time in the world- And I’m not wasting a single second of it! By the time I’m your age, I’ll have accomplished all sorts of things- I’ll have conquered Austin and New York and LA and Tokyo, and where will you be? Dead, probably.”

This caused him to block me, at least, for the night. The next day, he unblocked me and I apologized. He sent me a long paragraph text, a gruesome rape fantasy. I considered it his version of an apology.

***

There was an ongoing joke at AFS. We called it the curse. The curse was this: that anyone who started working at the theater would, within a month or two, break up with their boyfriend/girlfriend/s/o. It had already happened five or six times. Then, Barrett left me shortly after I started working there, and I became further affirmation that the curse was real. Fortunately for me, the curse’s next victim was my crush.

I had had a crush on Chandler since my first day on the job. He was handsome with slightly wavy brown hair and blue eyes- wasn’t too short or too tall. One could put his handsomeness in the same genre as Timothee Chalamet’s.

At first, I couldn’t tell if Chandler was slightly younger or older than me. Later I learned that he was 24, and that although he slept in a bunk bed at a rehab center, he came from a wealthy Southern family, the son of bankers.

“If you don’t mind my asking - What exactly are you recovering from? Like, what were you addicted to?” I once asked him.

“Everything,” he answered quickly, without making eye contact, “I have an addictive personality.”

“Oh,” I said, “That must be rough.”

“It was mostly weed though. That I was addicted to,” he continued, as he fiddled with a few stray straw wrappers, crumpling and uncrumpling them, then flicking them into the red velvet lobby.

“That’s not so bad,” I commented, “Half the people I know are addicted to weed. I thought you were gonna say like opiates or something.”

“Yeah, but it was more like weed and sex and coke and alcohol and adderall and cigarettes and xanax and ketamine and video games,” he said, clearing his throat, as if embarrassed.

“Honestly, it sounds like you got lit in college. As did I. Totally normal,” I assured him, as he swallowed another loud lump of guilt.

“I’m Christian and I’m sober now, though. I’m a changed man,” Chandler declared.

A few days later, Chandler and I worked a shift together. There was a long lull at the counter between movies, and the two of us stood awkwardly in silence, waiting for the other to break the ice.

After standing side by side for thirty minutes, Chandler asked quietly, “Do people ever, like, flirt with you here… Customers, I mean?”

My heart fluttered into my stomach. Naturally, I assumed he was flirting with me.

Blushing, I replied, “No, not really. Probably because the uniforms aren’t exactly sexy. But when I worked at an upscale sushi restaurant, some guy once gave me an $100 bill in exchange for my phone number.”

“Nice,” he mumbled as he poured himself a coke.

“Why do you ask?” I asked, looking up at him, smiling expectantly.

“I was just wondering if it would be weird if I flirted with this customer. There was this lady, like an hour ago. She was a bit older than me, but hot. I was extra nice to her. I gave her a free sample of the ginger brew. If she wasn’t attractive, I wouldn’t have done that.” He took a sip of his soda then added, “Kinda fucked up to think about.”

My heart sank. I thought he had wanted to flirt with me. Or maybe he was? Maybe he was meta-flirting? I thought to myself.

“Pretty privilege,” I remarked, “I’m sure you get it all the time.”

He smiled softly to himself, as if, internally, he were admiring his own pretty privilege- which, certainly, he was.

I let out a small sigh, a puff of minor resentment.

Then he whispered, barely audible, “I’m sure you do, too.”

I smiled down at the ground.

Just then, the movie got out, and we went back to work. As the crowd filtered through the lobby, I searched for an older, attractive woman who fit Chandler’s description, but found none. I caught his eyes scanning the crowd, too.

***

The following week, a tornado swept through the Austin area. Having grown up in New Hampshire, where tornados aren’t common, I had no idea what to do. I lived on the third floor of the Chateau Duval. Was I supposed to seek shelter in a basement somewhere? I wasn’t sure, so I brushed my anxieties aside and continued downing a bottle of red wine, alone. After three glasses, I texted 01, declaring my boredom and loneliness, asking him for a cure.

“I dunno,” he replied, “Read or watch movies.”

“What movie should I watch?” I asked. “Something erotic, please,” I added.

“Have you seen Le Navire Nuit? Marguerite Duras directed it,” he messaged back.

“No. I have not. I didn’t even know Duras made movies.”

“Duras is my favourite film director,” 01 stated, then continued, “Le Navire Nuit is about a woman who has a man’s phone number, but he doesn’t have hers. They fall in love, but they never meet each other in person.”

“How is that erotic?” I asked.

“Phones are very erotic. As you and I both know.”

01 emailed me a link to a Google Drive containing all of Duras’ movies. As the wind hissed outside and bare tree branches slapped against the kitchen window, I started watching Le Navire Nuit, only to find it excruciatingly boring. It was hardly a movie, more of an audiobook- an audiobook that was completely in French.

As I zoned out, staring at my laptop screen, a robust gust of wind whipped by, ratting the window. Then I heard screams. Too afraid to go outside and investigate, I went into the bedroom and peered out of a different window, one which overlooked the Chateau’s cloister. A man was dangling from the balcony, shrieking. I watched in panic, as a group of neighbors linked their arms together, hoisting him back up to safety. The man thanked his neighbors profusely, then they all disappeared into their apartments, slamming their doors inadvertently, as they continued to wait out the ferocious wind.

“Oh fuck,” I said in a voice message to 01, “I almost just saw someone die.”

“What did you think of the movie?” he asked, ignoring my alarm.

“Oh? The movie. I found it to be… quietly freaky,” I said- though, truthfully, I hadn’t even come close to finishing it and hadn’t understood a word of the French dialogue.

01 wasn’t a fan of my description, which I had pulled directly out of my ass. Like a good professor, he requested that I elaborate.

“Well, it’s not freaky, exactly,” I continued, “It’s just that the camera movement is, like, so slow, and all of the actors are like dolls, saying nothing- and that freaked me out. It’s very… uhm… apocalyptic.”

“For sure,” he responded, approvingly. “U have to get past the sort of gay Frenchness and get busy with the deep time aspect.”

“Yes, I understood the deep time aspect,” I declared, emboldened by his approval.

“Did u now, little girl?”

“Yah. And, speaking of the eroticism of the telephone, I’m going to give a boy my phone number tomorrow.”

“Oh, really?” messaged Angelicism, “What boy? Should I be jealous?”

“He’s my co-worker. At the cinema. You should.”

“Cinema boy,” 01 dubbed him.

For the remainder of the windstorm, I watched Silence of the Lambs (for the first time) and finished my bottle of wine.

I couldn’t help but draw comparisons between Angelicism01 and Hannibal Lector. Both range from evil to evil-ish, and yet, both are alluring. They try to manipulate young women remotely. I, much like Clarice Starling, am starving for approval from an older, more intelligent man. Rather than a boyfriend, I long for a mentor. And, like Starling, I am a bit sexually repressed, so I prefer to experience sexuality abstractly, from a distance.

Both 01 and Lector use their intellect to trick their respective young woman into thinking that she’s finally met someone who understands her, then they use her to escape. Lector escapes his cage literally, while 01 uses me as escapism.

There is one brief moment where Hannibal and Clarice touch. Through the cage, Lector hands her a case file, and, as he does so, there is a half-second close up of his index finger running gently over hers. I hit pause after this scene and replayed it over and over. Then I found a GIF of the shot online and DM’d it to Angelicism, knowing he’d recognize it and its implications.

Touch me. That’s all I wanted. Just the brush of an index finger and nothing more.

Angelicism01 was my Hannibal Lector. I hated him, but, in a way, I was his protegee.

***

I never asked Cinema Boy for his number.

In fact, over the duration of our next shift together, he began to cringe me out, and I started to question whether I liked him at all.

“What’s your favorite movie?” Chandler asked me.

“Southland Tales,” I replied without hesitation.

He burst into laughter.

“That was Richard Kelly’s wor-” He started to say ‘worst,’ then transitioned to ‘weirdest’ mid-syllable.

“Just wait til 2050,” I proclaimed, “and, then, maybe, finally, civilians will be ready to unpack the complexity of Southland Tales.”

“Spoken like a true prophet,” my supervisor pitched in, calling out from the bar.

“I love Richard Kelly- Don’t get me wrong,” Chandler went on, “But Southland Tales? Really, you guys? What about Donnie Darko? That was a trillion times better, objectively.”

“I mean, Donnie is in my top five, for sure,” I replied, trying to agree with my crush, though, secretly, I was beginning to question his intellectual abilities.

“You know, I have a giant Donnie Darko poster in my apartment?” Chandler bragged, “It’s like fifty inches long. I had to take it to a specialist to get it framed. It cost like $400. Just for the frame.”

“You look like someone who would have a fifty inch Donnie Darko poster in his room,” our supervisor remarked, chuckling, as he counted through a cash drawer.

Unsure if this was a compliment, Chandler muttered, “Thank you?”

Outside the theater, a torrential downpour came out of nowhere, thunder crashing. A Texas miracle.

“Do you have an umbrella, Sierra?” my supervisor asked.

“Fuck. No. I don’t,” I said, panicking-“And it’s a long walk home. Fuck.”

“Maybe there’s a spare umbrella in the lost and found?” suggested the supervisor.

We peered into the lost and found bin, not finding any.

“Fuck,” I mumbled, as I did some mental math, measuring my pitiful checkings balance against the price of an Uber. I was fucked.

“Where do you live?” Chandler asked abruptly, as a strange nervousness crept over him, “I mean- Sorry,” he corrected himself, “Sorry, if that sounds creepy-”

“I live near Hemphill Park,” I informed him.

“That’s close to me,” he exclaimed, brightening up, “I could drive you home. I really wouldn’t mind.”

“Okay, thank you so much. I really appreciate it!”

I tried to play it cool, but in that moment, my heart was skipping- and from the gitteriness of his speech, I knew that his was, too.

I think our supervisor noticed it, as well- the mutual excitement threatening to combust our young nervous systems.

“Stay safe out there, kids!” he called out, across the lobby, as Chandler and I clocked out and exited the building.

**

He had a Tesla. This, I did not expect from a 24-year-old making $17 an hour. Then again, his parents were loaded, and, clearly, they loved him.

Chandler’s phone connected to the car’s bluetooth speaker automatically, and “Alison” by Slowdive started playing at an ear-deafening volume. His hand jerked to the volume knob, twisting it drastically, until the song muted.

“Sorry, sorry!” he exclaimed.

“No, it’s okay,” I assured him, “I like that song. ‘Alison.’ By Slowdive. Good song.”

“You know Slowdive?” He turned towards me, his mouth gaping in disbelief.

“Yeah. Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine, shoegaze- I know what those are,” I said, shrugging.

When his mouth remained open, I asked him, “Why are you looking at me like that? Like I just detonated the vest in your mind?”

“Sorry, it’s just- I’ve never met a girl who knew what Slowdive is. You’re even cooler than I anticipated!” he exclaimed, grinning ear to ear, as he eased the Tesla out of the parking lot.

I thought about Chandler’s blue-haired ex-girlfriend whom I had seen accompanying him to a screening of Blue Velvet, and seriously doubted that this proclamation was true.

Easing the volume back up, he asked me, “So, you’re like, an art hoe?”

Before I could respond, he corrected himself, “Not like a hoe- I mean, I’m not calling you a hoe- to be clear. You’ve heard the term ‘art hoe’ before, right? And it doesn’t offend you?”

“Heard of it. Yeah. I don’t know if that is how I would self-describe, exactly. I would probably just call myself an artist.”

Internally, I winced at the term ‘art hoe,’ which, having gone to Bennington, was a slur I hadn’t heard since high school. ‘Art hoe’ brought to mind a very specific archetype- a girl with dyed hair, micro bangs, a septum piercing, a kanken backpack, van gogh socks, and shitty stick-and-poke tattoos lacquering her thighs. I did not think I was an ‘art hoe,’ but my crush, who was from the deep south, likely did not encounter these creatures in the wild the way I did.

I attempted to reroute the conversation Chandler-wards.

“What about you? Are you an artist of some kind?” I asked him.

“I’m a film director,” he declared, sitting up in his seat, “and I’m a screenwriter, too. I’m actually working on a screenplay right now. It’s based on a true story, about this guy who was a math professor who went crazy and started bombing people, and he wrote this whole manifesto about technology-”

“Ted Kaczynski?” I interrupted him.

“Oh! You’ve heard of him? That’s so based. You’re so based for that!” he exclaimed, gleefully, as he turned off the highway, entering my neighborhood.

“Yeah. I’m based. I’m, like, super based. And I’m goated, too,” I said, laughing, dryly.

“Hey, I know we’re almost to your place, but is there any chance you might want to keep hanging out?” he asked nervously. “You can totally say no.”

“Yes,” I said, dreading the thought of spending another minute alone in my dim apartment, “Sure. Let’s do it.”

“Ok, based,” he affirmed, his fingers tapping the steering wheel giddily. “Are you hungry? Do you wanna, like, get food or something?”

“Sure. I’m hungry.”

When I refused to come up with a preference for food, claiming “anything sounds good,” he drove us straight to Chipotle. I ordered some type of guacamole rice bowl thing, and, just as I was about to pay for it, Chandler swooped in with his iphone and tapped to pay.

“Thanks,” I exclaimed, feeling genuinely thankful, since, truthfully, I only had ten dollars in my bank account, and, if it hadn’t been for that date, I would have gone hungry that night. Wait.Was this a date? I thought. At Chipotle? Probably not.

My name is Eliza. Eliza is dead.

Sometimes, when my parents aren’t home, I comb through files on the family computer, searching for photos and videos of myself as a child. There aren’t many, and around 2007 or so, they disappear completely. That is when my parents became peak conservative and started to believe in the demonic aspects of portrait photography; that images of oneself erode the soul. During what my sister and I now refer to as “The Dark Age,” all of the mirrors in our tidy colonial home were covered up or taken away. So, for nearly a decade of my life, I had no conception of what I looked like. Based solely on the way people treated me, I assumed I was hideous.

There’s one grainy video, uploaded from a VHS tape, which I keep coming back to, in spite of the fact that it always brings me to tears. In it, I’m two years old, sitting on my dad’s lap. We’re perched on the edge of a rocky Maine coastline, facing the ocean, with a lighthouse towering over us on the right. There’s snot streaming out from under my button nose, but my dad keeps wiping it away with his finger, then rubbing the mucus onto the rocks.

My mother, who must’ve been pregnant with my sister at the time, asks me from behind the camera, “What’s that?”

A fuzzy finger comes into frame, pointing up at the sky.

I squint at the camera, smile, and say, “Ocean.”

“No, silly,” my dad says, “Try again. What’s this?” He points at the sky again.

“Ocean,” I say again, lowering my brow.

“No,” he says gently, pointing down towards the water. “What’s that then?”

“The sky!” I exclaim, lighting up.

“No! That’s the ocean, and that’s the sky,” my mom corrects me, “You know that, Eliza.”

“No!” I scream, waving my arm up and down,“No! It’s sky, ocean! Sky, ocean!”

“Well, if you go around telling people that, they won’t think you’re very smart,” my mother remarks with a snort-like laugh.

“Wrong, Mom! Sky, ocean! Sky, ocean!” I scream, as tears and snot drip down to intermingle on my chin.

One could, of course, interpret the footage as my toddler self growing frustrated at her own stupidity. Though, looking back now as a twenty-four-year-old, I see the video as eerily predictive of my entire relationship dynamic with my parents, as well as with God.

I always felt at odds with God. I don’t know why. From the moment I got here, I disagreed with the order in which the world was set up and felt an innate desire to disrupt it, to flip things on their heads. I wanted to create my own version of the universe, one in which the sky is the ocean and the ocean is the sky. From a young age, I knew that these thoughts were not simply sinful, but truly demonic. Though I didn’t want to be a disrupter and never knew where the perverse desire came from, I, nevertheless, accepted early on that, in the beginning of time, I had been preselected for this role- That is, the role of the un-elect.

Recently, I read a scene in Goethe’s Faust Part 1 where Faust is in his study, contemplating the phrase “In the beginning was the word,” and whether the word “word” should be switched out for “deed.” It struck me, for the first time, how insane the sentence “In the beginning was the word” is; It implies that language came before essence. This means that everything exists because, before it entered the universe, it had a predetermined name. It also implies that nothing can exist that hasn’t already been thought of and labeled, so what we perceive as novelty, invention, or progression can only ever be an actualization of a thought that has eternally lingered in the human collective consciousness, pre-inscribed by the divine.

Think back to the creation sequence; For each day, God, first, had a name, which then became a command, which finally transformed into an essence. The sequence involved in coding is a mimicry of the original creative act; You type a name, make it a command, then it does something. Even a computer, as close to novelty as it seems, is nothing new and will never produce anything that is beyond the scope of our imprinted imagination.

Unlike all other living creatures, human beings have never had the opportunity to experience pure novelty- This is because, after God created Adam, he then created Eve out of a rib from Adam, thereby, ushering in a new lineage of creation- one in which humankind can only be creative in reference to things that have already been defined. As gender theory f**** like to rehash, the fact that Eve was a referential creation, as opposed to Adam, who was God’s last original creation, explains why womankind has an affinity for artificiality, while men innately find artificiality disturbing.

In the absence of true novelty, we are obsessed with manufacturing it falsely. Women have a particular talent for doing this…

All men, whether they admit to it or not, are, to some degree, pedophiles. Even the ones who don’t act on it are guilty of conceptional pedophilia; Since what pedophilia is, in the abstract, is an obsession with beginnings. Deep down, every man views himself as a failure. Even the highly successful ones are bugged by one intrusive thought: If only I could start over, make more optimal decisions, I could cusp on the highest heights of power.

What big men envy in little girls is their blankness. They envy the tabula rasa, so much so, that they wish to scribble upon it, crumple it up. Most girls aren’t aware that they’ve been vandalized, until it’s too late- That is the tragedy. Once girls are used, they are no longer new and can never be new again. There is hope, however…After a girl has been deflowered, older women often swoop in to teach them the art of manufacturing faux novelty. Using the Parallax Trick, women can learn to project a false experience of newness, again and again.

What men envy in youth is the opportunity to start over. What women want is to give men amnesia, so that they feel, eternally, at the beginning of becoming something big.

In the beginning was the word…

Before essence, there were only words, names, ideas. That is why, while men are in a constant process of becoming, women are in a constant state of evaporation. Before the girl, there was an idea: Lo-li-ta. The name existed as an ideal in Humbert Humbert’s head long before he found a body to launch it onto. Lolita, though nearly a hundred years old, is still a little girl, and that is, simply, because she is nothing but a concept.

In order to manufacture novelty, you have to appear as ephemeral as possible, and there is nothing more ephemeral than an ideal. The most effective way to transform into an ideal is to become as detached from your body as possible. Shrink it down until it’s nearly invisible, and, then, die, so that you become what you were in the beginning: nothing but a name. When girls die, they leave a name and no body. Eliza is dead. Again and again, she dies sweetly, as a sacrifice, returning to the realm of pure thought. In the end was the word… Eliza.

I remember the moment I first recognized my own image. I was in the kitchen, watching the reflection of my fat arms wave up, then down upon the shiny surface of the oven door. From that moment on, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up: someone else, entirely.

In 2010, when I was ten years old, two girls came up to me, in line at a Burger King, and told me that I look like Carly Rae Jepsen. Shyly, I told them that I don’t know who that is. “How could you not know?” asked a girl wearing water-stained uggs, “She sings ‘Call Me Maybe.’”

“I don’t know it,” I said again, embarrassed, as I struggled to make eye contact with the girls.

“Well, she’s very pretty,” said another girl wearing identical tan uggs, black leggings, and a jingly stack of bracelets.

“Thanks,” I said, meekly.

As I returned to my family’s table, I heard the girls whisper and giggle, their bracelets tingling.

Later on, in the car, I asked my parents, “Who is Carly Rae Jepsen?”

Neither of them knew.

At the time, I thought the girls had been trolling me, since they dressed like the ones at school who were always so mean. Those girls always laced their compliments with cruelty, and, if you pointed out their bullying, the teachers would never believe you because those girls were angels.

Weeks later, when my mom took me school supply shopping at Walmart, I heard “Call Me Maybe,” echoing out over the tinny loudspeakers and, suddenly, it clicked for me- that it was the song the girls had talked about.

When I got home, I begged my parents to let me buy the song on iTunes. At the time, I had one of those clunky, white ipods, and it only had classical music on it, since my parents thought that explicit lyrics would brainwash me into becoming a useless slut or a criminal.

After an hour long debate behind closed doors, my parents summoned me to my dad’s office, where they told me that, although the lyrics in “Call Me Maybe” were slightly suggestive, they would let me buy the song, on one condition: I would have to pretend that lyrics about kissing and flirting were about something else, and that if, in any way, my parents began to suspect the lyrics were influencing my behavior, the song would not only be deleted, but my ipod would be taken away forever. On these terms, I cheerfully said, “Ok!” - not particularly caring about the lyrics, and caring more that maybe, finally, I would become somewhat assimilated within my peer group. So, I handed my parents two paper dollars. That, I believe, I was the moment I sold my soul.

The next morning, my parents, my sister, and I buckled up for a seven hour car ride to my grandparents’ house in Pennsylvania. For the entire seven hours, I played “Call Me Maybe” on a loop. I did the same for the ride back. Not even once did the song bore me. Every time I listened to it, I felt happier than the last. To this day, I can still listen to “Call Me Maybe” and feel as though I have never heard it before. It’s strange- There are so many songs, so many drugs that I squeezed all of the joy I possibly could out of, until one day, they didn’t work anymore; and still, whenever I hear CRJ’s one hit wonder while at a CVS, in line to purchase yet another plan B, or as a nitecore remix in a Bushwick club, the bubbly chorus never fails to get me high.

***

As a virgin teen, I spent my evenings alone, reclining on my white velvet window seat and writhing under sherpa blankets, deep in fantasy. Having never encountered a visually striking or desirable person, my fantasies were blankly effaced. I closed my eyes and saw white. Even though I wouldn’t become physically sexual until it was too late, as a child, I understood, prodigiously, sex as it is experienced in the pure abstract, as a non-act. For instance, I experienced the sight of a pure, blank screen as a distinctly sexual terror. I also understood the process of continual unrecognition and how, by defamiliarizing myself to myself, I could reach the utmost heights of sexual horror, which could never be achieved by the physical act.

By imagining blankness, I unconsciously touched upon something truer than a remembered face. Instinctively, I knew that, if I ever found a source of fulfillment in another person, its identity would be besides the point. I think, if I look into anyone’s eyes for long enough, their color will seep out as I start to piece together my idea of them as my sole fulfillment source. Truly, it could be anyone.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was discontent with my solitude; And, although I was comfortable swaddled in sherpa and reclining on my window seat, I wanted out. Maybe, if for a second, I had quit sheltering myself and awoken from my perma-fantasy, I would have felt a negative weight and learned, earlier on, that I contained a vicious and all-consuming absence. Even still, I wouldn’t know and will never know: An absence of what? In all my future lovers’ faces I would come to search for it, whatever it is, that congenital missing piece, never finding it and only ever drifting further and further away from fulfillment. Eventually, I realized that fulfillment wasn’t the point either, so I gave up scanning strangers’ faces on the train in search of an impossible recognition: a recognition from the future.

**

As a child, a fear of Armageddon consumed me. It was my mother who implanted this terror. She would often quote Thessalonians, reminding me that the end would come “like a thief in the night.”

Since The End could only arrive when I was least expecting it, I trained myself to think about it in every waking moment, in order to ward off that dragon. Before bed, I would kneel and pray, begging for my own salvation- Always my own, never anyone else’s. That was the only thing I ever prayed for, and each time I prayed, I felt guilty, because, I knew, in the back of my mind, that I didn’t truly believe I could ever cease to exist. And I knew that because I was incapable of fully surrendering my need for logos, that salvation wasn’t on the table for me.

God never responds. That is the point. He may or may not care about us. But that isn’t the point.

Faith is belief in what there is no proof of. That’s why it’s easier to be faithful when you’re not very smart. And that, however, is why smart people are quite dumb and vice versa. Of course, there are limits to human intelligence, but there’s a way to bypass those limits, and that is by being really fucking dumb.

I simply wasn’t dumb enough to love Him. I couldn’t transcend my own intelligence; I kept tripping over it, while I watched the rest of my family, untethered, glide up right into the sky. They made flying look so easy, as they all left me behind.

Like Susan Pevensie, I woke up one day and found myself orphaned, as all my family had been spirited away.

Whatever happened to Susan Pevensie? She grew up, is what happened. Out of the four Pevensie kids, Susan is the only one who chose the real world over Narnia. Christian theorists attribute this to her narcissism. Susan is much more beautiful than her younger sister, Lucy. This makes it easy for Lucy to love Aslan, while Susan, on the other hand, struggles to surrender her existence after she “discovers lipstick” and starts looking in mirrors. In other words, she realizes her sexual potential and trades in one portal for another. Afterwards, she knows too much to return to a fantasy world that could only ever be entered by virgins, children, and the retarded. And in the end, Susan is trapped on the wrong side of the wardrobe and left, alone, with her final relation: her reflection, which, day by day, transforms into a stranger.

What the Susan Pevensie dilemma means is that the more well-endowed you are, the harder it is for you to have faith. This could be for the better or worse, depending on what you believe.

The creator owes nothing to his creation. Not love. Nor approval. Not even attention. At sixteen or so, I came to that conclusion on my own. God owes me nothing, and, in return, I owe Him nothing back.

I stopped praying after I realized that the line of communication had long been cut. Nobody was there on the receiving end. He’s gone. Though, surely, He exists. But it just doesn’t matter, really.

After I relinquished my quest for salvation, I felt so much relief. All of the migraines and night terrors that had plagued me as a child went away, and, finally, I was at peace.

I stopped praying as soon as I received my first iphone. I don’t think it was a coincidence.

My parents didn’t know about the phone, which had been gifted to me, out of pity, by a gym class acquaintance. For years, I kept it a secret. And every night, after my parents went to bed, I would text a man named 01.

I never learned what 01 looked like. He said that that was besides the point.

Nevertheless, he told me everyday that he loved me. In exchange, I told him everything that happened in my life. Sometimes, he would slip up and tell me something about his.

Inevitably, I fell in love.

Every night, I fantasized about kissing him. In these fantasies, he remained faceless, like a God.

**

Dear 01,

I am luxuriating in bed, swaddled in a faux-fur blanket, surrounded by swan plushies. My bedsheets have a white silky sheen, but are plastic to the touch. I make a canopy out of them and resume texting you underneath it. I don’t want to be seen- That’s why, after I get home from school, I always make a canopy out of my bedsheets. My mother has a myriad of household rules, one of which is that I am not allowed to close my door. Sometimes, she posts up at the gaping threshold of my room and just stares, wordlessly. Every time she does so, I resent her a little more.

I know she is just trying to protect me, and I know what she is trying to protect me from: She’s keeping vigil over my innocence, so that I don’t lose it to men like you. And that’s why I’m texting you. Not because I love you, not because I want you to love me, but because I’m playing a game- not with you, but with my mother. The way she plays it, it’s almost like a subliminal sexual marketplace value competition. We both know that, against all ethical standards, I will always win in that domain because I am a teenage girl. This infuriates her. My mother has sabotaged my looks before by giving me unflattering haircuts and forcing me to wear clothes three sizes too big. At first, I didn’t question it- then, at thirteen or so, I caught on to what she was doing and felt betrayed. I began to notice her displeasure whenever I received any amount of male attention, even of an innocent variety, and, at a certain point, I started to provoke that attention, specifically, to upset her.

For some women, self-worth is based entirely on their sexual potential. Those women shouldn’t have children, though, typically, they do. Sometimes, I wish my father hadn’t married one of the vacuous cheerleaders at his high school and that he had, instead, held out for a mature relationship based on something other than optics. If he had held off, I wouldn’t exist, of course, but I also wouldn’t have known the difference between existing and not. Someday, if I have a daughter, I, too, will operate under a constant state of silent fury. But I won’t have children, because I already know that I’ll become the sort of woman who shouldn’t.

Love, your mad, beautiful daughter,

Eliza

**

Like every good mother, mine took me to the doctor’s annually. Before I turned seventeen, she switched out my pediatrician for a female doctor. When I had a male doctor, I used to flirt with him; Certainly, that is why she switched him out.

Last time I went, I started to flirt with the doctor in order to irk her. He kept to his professional script. Reading off a clipboard, he asked me, “Are you sexually active?”

Before answering, I looked over at my mother and read the fright in her face. Then I turned around and, seized by an uncharacteristic ability to make eye contact, looked into the doctor’s eyes.

I said, “Well, technically,” in a girly tone that further frightened my mother.

She cut me off.

“Technically, what? She doesn’t even know what that word means.” She guffawed.

“Uh, yeah. I do! I’m not that stupid.”

I giggled, appearing drunk.

The doctor suggested that my mother leave the room, so that I could speak confidentially. She refused, so he repeated the question.

“Well, technically,” I continued, “I’m not.”

“Technically?” he repeated, “And what does that mean exactly?”

“Well, sometimes, I-” I started, but my mother cut me off again.

“She gave you her answer. How about we move on to the next question? Best not to linger on each answer. Eliza has a tendency to give long-winded responses and play little games, but we don’t have time for that this afternoon, do we? I’m so sorry. Eliza has never been very considerate about respecting other people’s time.”

The doctor conceded and we moved on.

I may have been, somewhat unconsciously, spreading my legs the entire time, and, still, the doctor continued to harvest me for data, expressing nothing unprofessional. Later on in the appointment, when he put his hand on my chest to feel my pulse, I sort of leaned in- I may have even made an uncategorizable noise- and, in my periphery, I observed my mother sitting quietly in her chair, her face pinching together as she fumed.

I flirt to irk her. To this day, that’s what I do. I perform, out of habit, for a ghost.

Although my mother isn’t here anymore, I can still feel her gaze penetrating every room, beaming hazel brown light onto the furniture. Her gaze, which I used to view as an invasion of privacy, is now a quantum comfort. There is no scenario in which I will ever truly be alone. Because when I was born, I wasn’t alone; Nobody was. If I so happen to die alone, I will know that the two people who brought me into existence were there with me, in the hospital, the day I was born. Even though, twenty years later, they would come to shun my existence, I know that, regardless of how they felt about their daughter after-the-fact, on the day that I was born, my parents loved me. Perhaps it was the only day, but it doesn’t matter; It was perfect.

Although they are no longer with me, I am not alone, because everyone who bore witness to my beginning will also- present or not- bear witness to my end.

As a child, I used to dream, frequently, about being the last person on Earth. Back then, I genuinely believed that, one day, I would open my bedroom door, only to find that the outside world had been replaced by a white abyss. In preparation for the world’s disappearance, I kept a desk drawer full of crosswords and puzzles to occupy my mind. Some mornings, before school, I would wake up and open my door, anticipating an endless field of white, only to find a carpeted hallway and two golden-eyed cats blinking back. Although, on most days the appearance of the hallway and the cats came as a relief, there were mornings when their return disappointed me.

It never happened though. The end. Each morning, I opened my door and the world was still alive; Sometimes, to my dismay. At a certain point, I stopped anticipating an end, because it seemed insane and improbable to open the door and expect anything other than continuity.

***

01 was right. Within a few days, the opportunity arose.

It was a Saturday. Out of boredom, I went grocery shopping with my mother. I had no interest in the food, nor the people in the store. While shopping with my mother, I often felt like a dog being walked. I would put my earbuds in, glide through the aisles aimlessly, spaced out, feeling subhuman. Occasionally, I would see people who disgusted me- forgotten teachers, youth group leaders, fatties in scooters, etc. Every once in a while, I would slip candy into my pockets, just to prove to myself that I have a grudge against the store, the town, and everyone in it. I don’t like sweets, so I never ate any of them. I would just keep the tinsel-wrapped pieces on my desk as trophies of my petty hatred.

This particular grocery run was unremarkable, until my mother loaded her groceries into the car, then asked me to return the shopping cart. I rolled my eyes when she asked me to do it, though, truly, I didn’t mind. As I pushed the cart towards the front of the store, I was so spaced out, a car nearly hit me. I pulled away just in time.

As I returned the cart, shoving it back into the stack with unnecessary aggression, a scraggly, tattooed man smoking a cigarette called out, “That was a close one, eh?”

I smiled up at him, “Yeah, I guess I wasn’t really paying attention.”

“You gotta be careful,” he said, winking at me, “You’re too goddamn cute to die.”

I laughed, looking down at the pavement.

“You have a name, young lady?” he asked.

“Eliza,” I said.

“What is that? Short for Elizabeth?”

As he asked this, I noticed that he was missing a tooth and smelled like gasoline.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Well, Eliza, wanna get a drink with me sometime?”

“I’m not old enough to drink.”

“How old are you?” he asked, squinting at me, as if there was a tiny number written on my forehead.

“I’m 20, so almost old enough,” I lied.

“20 is old enough in my books.”

“The bars don’t really follow your books, though, do they?” I smiled, painfully, as I attempted to flirt back.

“You’re right. You’re a smart girl. I can tell.”

“I’ll give you my phone number though. Here, I’ll write it down,” I said, as I, to his astonishment, pulled a pen and an index card out of my purse.

“This is the luckiest day of my life, you know. Things like this don’t happen to me everyday.”

“Me neither.” I handed him the index card, and said, “Call me.”

“The name’s Ted, by the way. I think you forgot to ask.”

“Sorry! Nice to meet you, Ted! Goodbye!”

“Pleasure is mine!” He called out, grinning, as he folded up the index card and tucked it into the little chest pocket of his flannel.

When I got back to the car, I asked my Mom for a piece of gum, and she said, “What took you so long?”

I shrugged my shoulders and held out my hand, palm up, waiting for the strip of gum.

“Who was the guy you were just talking to?” she asked, accusatorily.

“Mom! Just pass me the Trident already, and maybe I’ll tell you!”

“Eliza, that is not how you speak to your mother! Tell me who that guy was, right now, or there will be serious consequences later!”

“Serious consequences? Like what? Are you gonna draw and quarter me?”

She let out an exasperated sigh.

“It was nothing, Mom! Seriously, you make everything so melodramatic. It was just some guy asking me to sign a petition or something.”

“What kind of petition?” she asked, skeptically, as she finally handed over the pack of gum.

“I don’t know! For some law about Salmonella prevention in chickens or something? I couldn’t really tell. He seemed out-to-lunch though.”

“Eliza! You can’t just sign things without reading them! You could’ve just gotten trafficked. You could’ve just signed yourself into child sex slavery!” she shouted.

“Wow!” I exclaimed, laughing, “Your dark, twisted imagination never ceases to amaze me!”

I glanced up at the rearview mirror and noticed that there were tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Hey, don’t cry, Mom. I’m sorry!” I pleaded, feeling a pang of guilt.

“Eliza, you don’t know the things I’ve been through. You don’t know the trials and tribulations I endure to make sure you don’t have to experience those things as well.”

I started to laugh, but covered it up as a faux cough.

“What? What is it now? You’re laughing at me?” she asked, her voice choking up.

“I’m sorry, it’s just ‘trials and tribulations’? I don’t know what century you’re living in, but-”

Abruptly, my mother jerked the car to the side of the road, and screamed, “Get out! That’s it! You can just walk home from here!”

I opened the door and slid out of the car.

“Oh, so now, you don’t care if I get sex trafficked? Weird,” I said, crossing my arms, taking a few steps back.

She sighed deeply, realizing that I have a point, then demanded that I get back in.

“Now that I’m out here, I might as well just walk. Or, maybe, I should take up hitch-hiking?”

“Eliza! Get back in the car! Now!”

“You know, I’d rather walk home. I think we both need some time off from each other right now.”

“Fine. Suit yourself.”

I stood in the bank of muddy grass, until she drove away, then walked back to Market Basket, hoping to find Ted still smoking his cigarette.

**

Dear 01,

There’s this sensation that I can’t pin down or describe. There’s no word for it. But if I had to describe it, I’d say that it’s excitement coupled with guilt, often felt when experiencing something new or slightly taboo for the first time. Have you felt that high-pitched disturbance shimmer across your nervous system, towards your extremities? There should really be a word for that.

Maybe it’s a singular sensation? Something that only I’m capable of feeling? Otherwise, I feel like there would already be a word.

Anyways, I felt it; this candy-colored nausea. I felt it right before I lost my virginity, then, again, the morning after.

I lost it to a stranger. To this guy, Ted. He approached me in the Market Basket parking lot. I was returning a shopping cart, when this car almost hit me. Ted was standing next to the Redbox, watching, smoking a cigarette. He hollered at me, told me I was “too cute to die.” So I gave him my number.

When I got back to the car, mom and I got into a screaming match. She told me to get out, and demanded that I walk home. I got out, backed away, arms crossed.

Instead of walking home, I found Ted, still smoking his cigarettes and pounding buttons on the RedBox machine. I asked him to give me a ride, then lamented to him about my strict upbringing. I told him my parents don’t let me watch movies. Shocked, he offered to rent out the entire Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and invited me over for a movie marathon. I consented, enthusiastically. He drove us to his place, which was just some dumpy shed, rotting on the banks of the Merrimack.

On the ride there, I turned the windows down and let the breeze whip my skin, as I basked in that ineffable feeling of high-pitched disturbance. The music he played was harsh and heavy, like nothing I’d ever heard before.

Ted wasn’t hot. That’s why I chose him. So that I could squeeze my eyes shut and pretend that he was you.

Not only was Ted not hot, but he was repulsive to me. He smelled like gasoline and liquor, had snaggled teeth. Somehow, though, the repulsion was the point. I found the right guy, the big bad wolf. Ted was the anonymous rapist of my mother’s nightmares. And I knew that I would fuck him, if only, because it was the absolute wrong thing to do. My pleasure came, not from my body, but from some fucked-up part of my mind. I craved disapproval, but I couldn’t tell you why.

Ted poured me a whiskey. I downed it, and made a face. He poured me another one. I downed it, and made a face. I asked him where’s the TV, and what about the movies, but he didn’t respond.

He showed me to his bedroom. The floors were carpeted, his bed unmade.

When he began to kiss me, I made a face. He kissed sloppily, with a wide, open mouth, like a sweaty coyote trying to maul me. I stopped him, and took off my clothes, awkwardly, struggling to unbutton and unhook every layer. When I finished, he stared at my body for a long time, in silence.

After minutes of not touching, he stooped down to gently stroke my vagina. Then, pushing apart the lips, examined it. “It looks like it’s never been used,” he remarked. I smiled, and said, “It has. A lot.” “That’s incredible, then. Haven’t seen a pussy like that since the 3rd grade.”

When Ted unbuckled his pants and pulled out his shrunken little dick, I looked away, visibly disgusted.

“What’s wrong with you, cunt? Why don’t you fucking look at me?” he shouted, grabbing my face and turning it down, towards his cock. “You don’t like my dick? Is it not big enough for you, you little slut?” he shouted, spit whistling through the gaps in his mouth.

“No,” I said, my voice quivering, “I like it, I like it. It’s big. Biggest dick I’ve seen, actually.”

“Liar,” he snarled.

Then he took me by the waist and flung me, stomach first, onto the bed. I yelped. He attempted to penetrate, but it didn’t work. He tried again, and the pain was too much for me, I started to scream. He ignored the screams and continued.

When the initial pain subsided, I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. As he pumped in and out, I began to grow bored. So I stared out of the window, watched the neighbor’s swing set sway, hoping he would finish quick. And, when he was done, again, I felt nothing. I looked down at the slime on my stomach, and I thought to myself, is that all there is?

It took a long time for the pleasure to hit. Technically, until the next day, when I woke up with this golden light beaming onto my face and a humming in my chest.

I felt so at odds with God that morning. And yet, everything in sight seemed novel and interesting to me, as if another dimension had been added to the world. Everything had this golden tint to it. My eyes adjusted to the tint eventually, but it never went away. The scent of clean linen lingered, mysteriously, in my nostrils all day.

That was the last time I was born again.

Nothing was the same after that. And I would never be new, not ever again.

Love,

Eliza

In the spring of 2022, I graduated from Bennington.

In tears, I dismantled my dorm room, tearing up the posters on my wall and packing the rest of my belongings into my car. After embracing my friends one last time at the edge of the misty lawn we called “the end of the world,” I drove off. As I reached the campus gates, I fought the temptation to turn and look back. A biblical story from childhood popped into my head; the story of Lott’s wife. Don’t look back, I cautioned myself, Or you’ll turn into a pillar of salt.

College is so cruel, I thought. You’re given a purpose and a community of like-minded people for four years, and then you’re just spat out into the real world, never to return.

And so, I drove, New Hampshire-bound, speeding through the lonely, curving backwoods roads, away from that magical, pastoral campus- the only place that ever felt like home.

Once I returned to my parents’ house, I had a major decision to make; I could stay there until I saved enough money to move to New York with my friends, or I could move to Austin, immediately, and live with Barrett.

I knew what I truly wanted was to move to New York, but I also knew that it could take years of rotting in the suburbs before I saved up enough money. That’s why I chose to move in with Barrett, even though, at that point, our relationship was already on the rocks.

Within a week of graduation, I was back in Austin. Barrett and I had moved into a two-bedroom apartment in a roach-ridden building called “Chateau Duval.” This time, there were no roommates, just the two of us.

During my first full year in Austin, I got a job as a maitre d’ at a sushi restaurant, which I later rage-quit, after Angelicism started paying me, once again- this time, to be in his movie, Film01. In lieu of putting in my two weeks, I sent my manager a handwritten note that read, “I’m moving on to become a famous actress. If you ever need to contact me- which you won’t- you can contact my agent, Angelicism01. Here is my autograph below. Don’t throw it out! Could be worth more than all the money I made at this job one day. Best, Sierra Armor.”

Months later, after I blew all of my money on TheRealReal, I got a job at an indie bookstore, but got laid off after the holidays. Finally, in the winter of 2023, I landed the best job of my life, working at an art house cinema, founded by Richard Linklater himself. The pay wasn’t great, but I was so happy working there, I didn’t care. I never again found myself in a position where clocking in gave me joy. The work environment reminded me of that movie, Empire Records, and I spent most of my shift enthusiastically discussing movies with my co-workers.

One day, Barrett walked into the theater, came to my register, and, as I anxiously comped his ticket, he made a comment, telling me I looked “cute in my little uniform.”

“Thanks,” I replied, quietly, feeling embarrassed.

My supervisor, who was standing beside me, noticed something was off about the interaction.

“Do you know that guy? Was he being creepy to you?” he asked, protectively.

“Yeah, I know him,” I said, “He’s my –” I started to say ‘boyfriend’, but ended up saying ‘pimp’ instead.

My supervisor looked quite disturbed, and the conversation ended there.

**

The fights between Barrett and I grew more intense- though, most were over trivial things, such as doing the dishes and my refusal to learn to drive his car. At some point, we began to sleep in separate rooms.

After one really intense fight, I debated calling my parents and, for once, telling them the truth about my life, that I had made a big mistake, that I didn’t feel safe, that I wanted to return home, like a prodigal daughter. I put off that call though, because, stubbornly, I wanted to believe that everything was fine. Instead, I texted Angelcism01 and told him everything. I confessed that I had fallen out of love with Barrett, that I felt vaguely unsafe, and that I needed to save money and leave. Angelicism was always online, no matter the time, and would respond within seconds, advising me on how to plan my departure. “Runaway to New York,” he advised me, “You have friends there who will take care of you until you get on your feet. I will help you get there.”

One day, Barrett and I got into a blow out fight, after he refused to drive me to the grocery store. He forced me out of his car, and I walked home, for several miles, tears blurring my vision.

The next day, with little-to-no explanation, he was gone. I came home from work and most of his clothes were gone. His cat was gone, too. I called him, and he didn’t pick up. The next day he texted, “I’m in LA. What do you want? Stop calling.” “When are you coming back?” I asked him. “Don’t know. Depends. Could be a month or two or three,” he said. “Will you keep paying your part of the rent?” I asked, anxiously. “Only until the lease is up in July,” Barrett said.

And, so, I was left alone in the dingy, dimly-lit apartment with just my thoughts and my dear friend Angelicism01. The lonelier I got, the more I texted 01. This is also when I wrote what are, in my opinion, the greatest passages in my novel, about falling in love with a faceless persona.

**

Who is Jonty Tiplady?

Jonty Tiplady was once a schoolboy from Doncaster, England. In his youth, he was a dirty blonde with ice blue eyes. His real name was Jonanthan, but his mother nicknamed him“Jonty” after a cartoon viking and the name stuck for life. His face was pretty; He had the androgynous, angelic beauty of an anglo Bjorn Andresen or a preteen Arthur Rimbaud.

In every childhood photo I’ve seen of Jonty, he’s wearing a subtle expression of unease, as if he were looking at the camera distrustfully, viewing the lens as a knife, wielded lovingly by a family member.

Jonty fell in love for the first time when he was six years old. Her name was Annabelle, and he never got over her. She wore clean, white tights everyday of first grade. It was her tights which originated his love for the color white.

One day, as they chased each other around the playground, Annabelle tripped and fell and the asphalt filed off a translucent strip of skin, marking her leg with a long, epic scrape. Blood ran down from her knee to her shin, filling the scrape’s swift canal. The tights were ripped and stained red and brown. As Annabelle cried, so did Jonty. Not because he felt her pain, but because he hated to see such beauty suddenly sullied. Jonty didn’t calm down until the next day, when Annabelle arrived at school, dimpled and smiley as ever, with a fresh pair of white tights and a bandaid pasted underneath.

Jonty and Annabelle kissed once or twice in 1st grade, and a thousand times in the 2nd, beneath the yellow slide when the grownups weren’t looking. Jonty said the kisses were full body electric in a way he never felt again, not even, later, as a teen, when became addicted to ecstasy. In 3rd grade, Annabelle left him for another, more extroverted little boy, and Jonty was so crushed that, for years, he stopped talking altogether, as he withdrew, completely, into his own mind.

Jonty never got the color white out of his retina. If he could, he would erase everything, his body, his mind, just to tabula rasa himself back to preschool, when, briefly, everything felt infinite, and the smallest touch would light his every nerve ending on fire.

As he grew older, he ruined his body and mind in every possible way just to get it back; that sweet sensation of novelty; the pure, blank, white. But there were no more first kisses. And each mouth was just as hollow as the last.

As Jonty transformed into a lanky adolescent, his precociousness was misread as autistic strangeness and oversensitively. He read voraciously, which only further alienated him from his working class parents. One day, while browsing a bookstore, he came across the work of Jacques Derrida and became obsessed. He opened the famously tedious text and understood it instantly, reading it from front to cover, while standing petrified in the store, for hours. It was as if his mind were designed, specifically, for deconstructionist theory.

He was the best at language. Through Derrida, he understood language as it really was; a total derangement of reality. If you mastered language, you could escape reality completely, he realized. And, so, Jonty began to write his way out of his senses.

When he was 19, Jonty ran away to Paris to stalk Jacques Derrida and offer him his services as a Derridean acolyte. His services were accepted, and Derrida took him in as his protegee.

In Paris, Jonty rapidly became fluent in French. He spent his days watching Godard movies at the cinema, dating beautiful women, and absorbing heavy theory. At night he would go to clubs and take ecstasy and get wasted. He became sexually experimental, sometimes hooking up with men, sometimes making love in public, in broad daylight, sometimes participating in orgies. His behavior became progressively sloppier as he slipped into the realm of total derangement of the senses. Eventually, though, the frequent ecstasy use fried his pleasure receptors and he grew depressed and nonverbal again.

In spite of the ups and downs of his late teens and early twenties, Jonty managed to complete a PHD at the age of 23, with a dissertation on English Romantic Poetry. He got a teaching gig shortly afterwards, but failed to take the job seriously. He would drunkenly grade his student’s papers, going through the pile without reading them, arbitrarily assigning them letter grades, writing random As, Bs, Cs, and Ds, then shuffling the pile. Eventually, the university administration caught onto his antics and fired him. He spent the rest of his 20s and 30s on heroin, sometimes homeless, and he never got a job again.

In his late 30s, he was institutionalized after he drove his car off a cliff in a failed attempt to kill himself. In the mental hospital, he was kept on tranquilizer drugs that tampered his creativity and kept his graphomania at bay. One day, in 2016, while being transported somewhere on a bus, he heard the song “Nikes” by Frank Ocean for the first time, and felt so deeply that the song was a siren call of freedom that, as soon as the bus stopped, he made a run for it. Somehow, after he escaped, he managed to get himself a hotel room and cell phone. On his phone he recorded disturbing videos of himself punching himself in the face repeatedly, “Nikes” droning in the background, as his haunted eyes welled with tears, bruising black and blue. The next day he was back in the mental hospital.

Four years later, he was in his early 40s, living with his parents and completely sober. He was sober to the point where he couldn’t even drink coffee or soda, for fear that even caffeine could trigger another manic episode. He began to replace drugs with food and gained a bit of weight, but didn’t care so much, since he didn’t talk to people anyway. He got into Tibetan Buddhism and meditation and took long walks on the beach. Finally, in his solitude, he seemed to have healed himself.

It was around this time that he adopted the name Angelcisim01 and began to write Substack articles. At first, he saw the project as a way to start over, to finally achieve a tranquil blankness, but it wasn’t long before the egomania and derangement overtook him again.

During the summer break of 2021, I flew, once again, to Austin, lying to my parents and telling them I had an internship there. When my parents questioned how I could afford the $600 round-trip ticket, I told them that my internship provided me with a travel stipend.

Truthfully, I didn’t have an internship; I had an angel investor. That June, an anonymous online presence called Angelicism01paypalled me $1,000 to run several clone accounts of his twitter. The clone accounts, presumably, were to make it look like 01 had more fans than he did. That way, he could trick the internet into thinking that Angelicism was a spontaneous cultural movement with some momentum. Somehow, it worked. As soon as I started running a few clone accounts, dozens more seemed to pop out of nowhere. Within a month, my TL was drowning in knock-off angelicist statements, and, eventually, it became difficult to discern which Angelicism accounts were run by the man himself and which were his shadowy imitators.

When 01 first sent me the money, he said something along the lines of, “Don’t worry. It’s not a real job. Just tweet every now and then, if you feel like it. If you don’t feel like it, that’s ok too. Just take the money, and, with it, buy beautiful things. This is my gift to you.”

Delighted, I immediately ordered a haul of Brandy Melville garments and Glossier products. With the rest of the money, I bought a ticket to Austin.

From the clone account, I drunkenly crafted tweets, such as, “i spit an omicron onto your lips, kiss, kiss, kiss” and “an angel’s pussy never ends” and “my bride has last-night-in-heaven eyes. even when the stars are gay, even when the gods are retarded, our honeymoon alone is infinite, let’s get it started.”

After a month or so of sporadic tweeting, I started neglecting the account, choosing to focus on my own Twitter account. Realizing this, Angelicism walked back his original statement and shot me a few angry dms accusing me of being a “slacking ass hoe.” This is the first time 01 ever directed any negativity at me, and it hurt. I reminded him of his own words, that the 1k had been “a gift.” Then I told him that if he wanted me to do any more “clone work” he’d have to pay me again. He paypalled me an additional $500. I continued to be a “slacking ass hoe.”

When I returned to Barrett’s house for the summer, I learned that an additional roommate had moved in. During the spring, Ben had started e-dating an e-girl named Deb, and before meeting her in-person, he agreed to let her move into the already crowded little shack.

“Let me introduce you to my girlfriend, Deb,” Ben announced, as I dragged my suitcase into the house.

Deb was in the kitchen, cutting up carrots, wearing a head covering that resembled a hijab, except it only covered her hair. She was shockingly pretty.

“Deb,” Ben continued, “This is Sierra. Barrett’s girlfriend.”

Deb resumed her cooking, ignoring us both.

“Does she have airpods in or something?” I asked.

“Uh, no. She’s just like that.” Ben sighed. “I mean, she’s just a little autistic. Nothing wrong with that! As are we all in this household. Please don’t take it personally.”

“Uh, ok. I won’t” I said, disappearing into Barrett’s room.

Later that night, I asked Barrett, as he scrolled through twitter on his laptop, “What’s up with Deb, Ben’s girlfriend?”

“She’s a freak, a real piece of work.”

“Was she wearing, like, a hijab or something?” I asked.

“Yeah. Ben and Deb just converted to Orthodoxy. The hijab is just some performative theatrical bullshit. Deb is an autistic, rich whore who just woke up one day and decided to become a tradwife for fun. I tried to talk some sense into Ben, but he’s too gay and retarded to listen. That girl’s gonna eat him alive.”

“Does Deb have a job?” I asked.

Barrett scoffed, “Of course she doesn’t have a fucking job. She doesn’t pay rent either.”

“How do you know she’s rich, then?”

“Did you take a look at her clothes? Everything she wears is either Rick Owens or Ann Demeulemeester, except for the hijab, of course. She has a $300k car parked outside.”

“How does she have so much money?”

“Well, that’s the best part- Apparently, her dad is a famous Mexican assassin,” he informed me.

“A famous assassin? Like, who did he assassinate though?” I asked.

“Fuck if I know.”

A few days later, after taking a walk to visit the thrift stores on Guadalupe street, I returned to the house to find Deb, once again, cutting up vegetables in the kitchen.

“Hi, Deb,” I greeted her.

Once again, she ignored me. I went straight to Barrett’s room, finding him laid back in his frameless bed, fingering his guitar.

“Is Deb deaf or something?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “Just retarded and weird.”

“Because everytime I try to say hi to her, she just ignores me,” I continued, “Which sucks, because she’s the only other girl in the house and I want to be her friend.”

Upon hearing this, Barrett slammed his guitar on the ground.

“I’ve had it with this bitch,” he declared. He got up and charged into the kitchen.

“Deb!” he hollered at her, “When you’re living in this house… FOR FREE, you will treat my girlfriend with respect! You hear me? She’s been nothing but nice to you. And I don’t give a shit if you’re autistic. I’m autistic, too! That’s no excuse to be rude.”

Deb continued to stir a pot of boiling vegetables, acting as if neither of us were there.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Barrett shouted, hardly an inch away from her hijab-covered ear.

Suddenly, Ben burst out of his room, entering the kitchen, a pair of Beats headphones draped around his neck.

“Sorry, I was in class. Is there a problem? What’s going on guys?” Ben asked, eyes wide with anxiety.

“Yeah, there’s a fucking problem. Your girlfriend is being rude to my girlfriend, acting like fucking Helen Keller over there, when I know she can see and hear perfectly fine,” Barrett continued, his voice growing louder.

Barrett started to wave his hands in front of Deb’s face, “Hello? Hello? Is there anyone home?” Then, he started to snap his fingers over her nose.

“Benny!” Deb screeched in a Mexican accent, “Tell him to stop!”

“Hey, man. Can you please cut it out, okay? It’s not like she’s hurting anyone,” Ben urged.

“I will stop, if SHE asks me to. Not you, limp dick. She needs to acknowledge my presence at the bare minimum. Otherwise, I’m going to need her to vacate the house, immediately.”

“Ugh!” Deb cried out, throwing off her apron and storming into Ben’s room, slamming the door. Ben followed close behind. Bilingual arguing ensued behind closed doors. A few minutes later, Ben and Deb stepped into the living room.

“Deb, do you have something to say?” Ben asked, nudging her shoulder.

Deb was silent for a moment, gazing down at the floor.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

“It’s ok-” I started.

“I want her to look at me when she says it,” Barrett interrupted.

Deb tilted her head up. There were tears in her big, brown eyes.

“I’m sorry!” she repeated.

“There you go,” Barrett said, “Wasn’t so hard, was it? I’m really not asking for much here- Just a basic acknowledgement of our existence in this house.”

Suddenly, Deb squeezed her wet eyes shut and started chanting something in Spanish.

I turned to Ben. “What is she saying?” I asked him.

“Well, technically, I don’t know Spanish, only Latin, which is actually pretty close to Spanish, but, uh, from what I can tell, she’s either blessing you or uhm, like, hexing you,” Ben replied.

“Whatever man,” Barrett growled, returning to his room. I followed close behind.

**

In the following days, Barrett would often Facetime his friend Angelcism01. During these calls, Barrett would make me leave the room. For whatever reason, I was not allowed to know what the mysterious blogger looked like, and this pissed me off to no end. I would pester Barrett with endless questions about him.

“What’s his real name?” I asked him.

“Jonty Tiplady,” Barrett said.

“Jonty Tiplady?” I burst into laughter. “Are British people even real?”

“Yup, that’s his real name. Jonty and I have been friends for seven years.”

“What’s Jonty’s deal? I mean, what is his lore?” I asked.

“He’s a poet in the UK who briefly worked in academia, but got fired. Probably because he was addicted to heroin. After getting fired, his long-term girlfriend left him, so he drove his car off of a cliff. Miraculously, he survived the crash, and, afterwards he was ‘born again’ as Angelicism01.”

“That’s kind of beautiful,” I said, fascinated, “What does Jonty look like?”

“He was once handsome, in a very British way,” Barrett said, “But now he’s fucking fat.”

“How fat?” I asked.

“Why are you so interested in this guy?” Barrett snapped, suddenly, “Why don’t you just fly to the UK and date his fat ass?”

I grew quiet. I stopped asking questions, but continued to construct a picture of Jonty in my head as some kind of tortured, misunderstood genius. My obsession grew day by day.

One evening, after Barrett had Facetimed Jonty for several hours, I asked him what they had discussed.

“Jonty keeps asking about you,” Barrett said, “It’s really fucking disturbing.”

“What did he say about me?” I asked eagerly.

“He keeps talking about how hot you are. I don’t like it,” Barrett said, “I don’t like it one bit. And I don’t want you to talk to him anymore.”

I promised not to dm Angelicism01 anymore. Within the hour, I broke my promise.

**

Around this time, Barrett was recording a podcast episode with a group of teenage Hexcore/Sigilcore rappers. The rap collective was also, supposedly, a gang. The premise of their music was to rap in hexes; They believed that their songs could cast spells on rival hexcore rap groups/gangs, who would then hex them back. Whether or not the curses worked, all members of the original hexcore scene are currently either dead or in jail.

They had names like Luci4, axxturel, and slurwhenitalk, and their musical aesthetic incorporated a lot of vampire and anime motifs. Although the artists were either barely 18, or even younger, they admitted to having a lot of “bodies” on Barrett’s podcast. And by “bodies,” I don’t think they meant people they had sex with. I mean, unless those people were already dead.

Anyways, the hexcore group’s open admission of murder on the pod, then led to even more murder, and eventually, to their arrests.

Months later, Barrett, upon hearing about the bloody demise of hexcore, started to grow paranoid. He believed that one of the rappers who had evaded arrest would either put a hex on him or come after him and assassinate him, or both. In a panic, he took down the episode and privatized all his social media accounts.

One day, Barrett received a dm on Soundcloud from a 13-year-old rapper that read, “see ya in da rose garden.” The message sent him on a downward spiral. Before I knew it, Barrett had purchased yet another gun. He started open-carrying the gun with him everywhere we went: into the Buc-ee’s, into the H-E-B, etc. It was Texas, after all. He started to sleep with both a kitchen knife and a gun within arm’s reach. I once attempted to makeout with him, and he pushed me off, exclaiming, “Can’t you see I’m not in the mood? Can’t you see I’m on the verge of a panic attack?!”

I tried to reason with him, telling him that it was ridiculous for a 34-year-old, 6 foot 2 man to be afraid of a literal child. But any attempt at calming him down was met with “You don’t understand! The kid has shooters. They could be anywhere!”

One day, we went for a walk in a park, and Barrett became convinced that the basketball-wielding teens walking behind us were some of the “shooters.” So, after urging me to run, we ran to his car, and then, he drove us recklessly, believing that we were in some sort of car chase. When, really, he was just in a car chase with only himself.

When his erratic driving really started to freak me out, I began to cry. Noticing my tears, he became briefly lucid and slowed down. “I think we lost them,” he said, “Sorry I scared you. Let me buy you a drink.”

We pulled up to the nearest bar and he bought me a whiskey soda. The bar was dark. He sat and watched me drink.

“God, I miss drinking!” Barrett exclaimed, “It was my favourite thing in the whole world before I stopped. I’ve been sober seven years, and I know if I slipped up just once, I could never go back.”

I just sat there, saying nothing, and let him talk.

“I’m sorry I scared you,” he apologized, tenderly, “I have PTSD. You see, when I was 22, around your age, I was homeless, living in a ghetto area in Cleveland.”

“Why were you homeless?” I asked, “Aren’t both your parents lawyers? Didn’t you go to art school?”

“After I got expelled from CalArts, I didn’t dare go home,” he said, grimly, “So I ran away to Ohio.”

“Why did you get expelled from CalArts?” I asked, sipping my drink.

“Because I got cancelled,” he stated.

“For rape or something?”

“No, I wasn’t even interested in sex back then. I got cancelled for my art. My paintings were too edgy, and the feminist mafia came after me.”

“Too edgy for CalArts?” I questioned, “What could you possibly paint to get expelled?”

“Well, I did a series of portraits of famous women, but they had bruises all over their faces, like they had been beat up. Before I knew it, my scholarship got taken away on account of ‘glamorizing domestic abuse.’ That and I sold LSD.”

“That’s insane,” I responded, not knowing how to react, “People take things so literally.”

Barrett continued to recall his life as a homeless art school dropout in Ohio, telling me that the only reason he survived was because he earned the local gangsters’ respect by dropping the n-bomb and smoking crack with them in an abandoned building. One of the gangsters even allegedly gifted Barrett an n word pass that would never expire. He used that pass quite liberally ever after.

“When you’re living somewhere ghetto,” Barrett advised me, “the only thing that will save your ass is showing the local ****** that you aren’t afraid of them. When they see a scared little white person, they’ll taunt you endlessly. But when they see a white person who isn’t afraid, they’ll give you the pass. After that, they’ll respect you forever. They may even act as your guardian angel, if any other crackheads try to kill you.”

Later that night, Barrett and I attempted to have sex again. Like all the other times we tried, it didn’t work. As it turns out, big dick + tight pussy isn’t quite as feasible a combination as it sounds. Giving up, I laid down beside him, naked.

Suddenly, there was a tapping sound at our window and a shadowy figure moving behind it. Barrett leapt out of bed. Still naked, he grabbed his gun, opened the window, and aimed a red beam at the figure running off into the distance. He shot a couple times and missed. I shouted at him, urging him to stop.

When he put the gun down, I asked him, “Who was it?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “Just some fucking homeless person.”

**

Later, that Fall, during my senior year at Bennington, Barrett came to visit me on campus. Even though there were still Covid rules in place banning outside visitors, I still managed to sneak him into my dorm for a few days, before setting off on a road trip to New York City in my barely-working 2003 silver Saturn.

In New York, I had my first ever reading at an event called Angel Fest, which was hosted by ExPat Press and funded by Peter Thiel, the gay founder of Paypal. Although Angel Fest was later heralded as a “cursed event,” due to the on-scene death of one of the hosts, a famous meme page admin, the reading also, for many, marked the beginning of what Angelicism later termed “the vibe shift.”

Curtis Yarvin was there, wearing a Che Guevara shirt and tripping on acid. Surrounding him were a variety of Dimes Square personalities I had previously, voyeuristically followed on Instagram. It was as if a book full of fictional characters had suddenly come to life before me.

This is where I met Chloe (future Angelicism girl) for the first time, and we took a picture together, hugging each other, wearing angel wings.

Barrett read aloud from Angelcisim01’s substack. Then I read a short story about Olivia Rodrigo meeting Joe Biden. To my amazement, people seemed to love my story. Even Curtis Yarvin came up to me afterwards and complimented me, (though he did not seem to understand that the story was about Olivia Rodrigo and not about myself.) “Did you really get molested by Joe Biden?” Yarvin asked me. “Yes,” I told him.

At Angel Fest, I even ran into Ben, Barrett’s then-roommate.

“Where’s Deb?” I asked him, noticing that he came to the party alone.

“Funny that you should ask,” he said, scratching his head, awkwardly, “Deb and I just broke up.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” I said, though, really, I wasn’t.

“As it turns out,” he continued, “Barrett was exactly right about Deb. She turned out to be a nutcase. And I mean, not just quirked up, like, an actual psychopathic nutcase.”

“Yeah something was definitely off about her,” I agreed.

“She didn’t even love me!” Ben exclaimed, “She turned herself in to a convent and confessed to a priest that she was obsessively in love with Barrett the entire time.”

“What?!” I shouted, spitting out some vodka soda, “With Barrett? There’s no way? Barrett hates her.”

“I know, right!” he continued, “Well, apparently, Deb was possessed by a demon that made her obsessively want to kill you, then have sex with Barrett. She wrote it all down in her journals. She had all these detailed plans, drawings, everything. She was even going to get her Dad come up from Mexico and, you know, take you out, so to speak.”

“WHAT THE FUCK,” I exclaimed, “So, you’re saying the entire time Barrett was tweaking about getting assassinated, there was literally someone hiring a hit man to kill ME.”

“Uh, yeah,” said Ben, “She even confessed that she would sit outside your guys’ window and watch you have sex. Pretty disturbing stuff.”

“So the homeless guy that Barrett shot at was actually Deb??”

“Yep.”

“What should I do? Get a restraining order against her?” I asked, suddenly feeling unsafe and a bit dizzy.

“No need,” Ben said, “I mean, first of all, she’s in Mexico. That, and the exorcism definitely worked.”

“Sure hope it did.”

It was January 2021, and I was 20, a junior at Bennington College in Vermont. I lived in a white colonial building called Stokes, and I had my own, dimly-lit single room that smelled like two centuries of cigarette smoke.

Because of the pandemic, my classes were partly on zoom, the dining hall was take-out only, and any and all partying was explicitly banned. I spent my days and nights at my desk, eating ramen, staring at zoom squares, chatting on discord, listening to podcasts, thinking and writing- which is exactly how I spent my lonely days prior to college. Why am I here? I thought. Why am I going into debt for this?

My only reprieve from loneliness was my then-boyfriend, Barrett. He was thirty-four at the time, hosting a somewhat successful podcast called Contain, which had a cultish fanbase of alienated, pseudointellectual young men. In my eyes, Barrett was famous. His attention thrilled me. Our relationship started in Twitter DMs, then sprung to Facetime, where, after drinking half a bottle of Tito’s alone, I stripped off all my clothes and spread my legs, lasciviously, sitting naked on a clunky, wooden desk chair. I watched him jerk off to me. After he came, he asked me why I didn’t touch myself. I told him that I didn’t know how.

“Because of your puritanical upbringing?” he asked. Yes, I told him. Although, truthfully, I just couldn’t understand how watching a man stroke himself on screen was supposed to turn me on. I needed to be touched.

I closed my laptop. Head spinning from the liquor, I laid down on my college-issued cot. I was alone, and yet, not lonely. Blissed-out with hope, I hugged my pillow, imagining him there.

That January, Barrett moved from LA to Austin and settled in a rundown little house, rooming with a local theology student named Ben. When Barrett offered to fly me out to Texas for winter break, I was thrilled. As I packed up my things, I watched Richard Linklater’s Slacker, over and over- as per Barrett’s request. Prior to this trip, I had never left the East Coast. Nor had I ever travelled alone.

When I touched down in Austin, the song “Just Like Heaven” by The Cure played over the airport’s tinny loudspeaker. I felt transformed. The sun shone brighter, the sky was wider than I’d ever seen it.

Barrett picked me up from the airport in a red vintage car from the 70s. The door handle was broken, so I had to enter through the driver’s side and climb over him to get in. Barrett looked older, scragglier than he did on screen. Facetime had obscured his fine lines and white hairs- but I was so enchanted by the novelty of the situation that I didn’t really care.

He took me out to Juiceland, then Whataburger, before driving me home to his little shack, where he showed me his collection of guitars and guns, his tabby cat named Vinny.

The visit was heavenly until the ice storm hit. It was a mild snow storm compared to the Nor’easters of my New England childhood, however, the Texans were ill-prepared for the freak weather.

A tree fell on the house, causing a miniature explosion, and we lost electricity for two weeks. The walls of the shack were cardboard-thin. There was no heat.

Barrett, his awkward roommate, Ben, and I, bundled ourselves in layers upon layers of clothes and congregated in the living room, by candlelight, as we used the last of phone batteries to try and strategize our survival. All the stores appeared to be shut down; The car wouldn’t start. Things were pretty fucked. I used that last percent of my phone battery to post a dramatic Instagram story begging for food and water, proclaiming to my several thousand followers that I was about to die. Then it died.

Barrett did not handle the stress of the situation very well. He kept pacing around the house, gun in hand, muttering, “We are going to die,” under his breath over and over. I watched him pace, sitting on the couch, his cat curled up beside me. “No, we’re not,” I said, giggling slightly. Barrett ran over to me and grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me, causing his cat to flee from my lap. Tears in his eyes, he screamed at me, “You’re too fucking young and stupid to understand. This is serious! We could fucking die right now! Do you understand? We could fucking die!”

By the time he let go of me, I was crying too.

Once Barrett stormed off outside, into the snow, Ben sat next to me and tried to console me. “Wow. He really freaked out right there,” said the lanky 23-year-old, tapping his foot nervously, “I mean, like, we’re not going to die, uh, obviously. Let me try and just reason with him. The man’s really stressed out.”

When Barrett reentered, announcing that he had succeeded in starting up his car, Ben attempted to speak to him, “Hey man, that’s great. You see- we’re not going to die. We’re fine.”

Barrett glared at him. “Shut the fuck up,” he said, “Both of you are sheltered… children. You don’t understand the severity of the situation we’re in. If it wasn’t for me, you’d both be dead. None of us are safe yet. And you two know nothing about survival. Which puts all of the burden on me, yet again!” He put his hands to his face and cried out, “It’s not fucking fair. I should’ve stayed in LA!”

“Why don’t you just charge your phone in your car and call one of your rich friends?” I asked him, calmly.

Which is what he did. And that’s how we ended up sharing an Air BnB with a documentary film crew; The subject of their documentary? Alex Jones, of course.

After a couple rounds of beer in the Air BnB’s living room, the film crew started explaining to Barrett, Ben, and I how the winter storm was actually manufactured by an Orgone Accumulator, strategically issued by the Chinese government in an attempt to assassinate the podcaster Joe Rogan. Already drunk, I burst out laughing, only to realize that the cameramen were dead serious.

“I-I-I noticed something,” Ben piped up, stuttering, “So, like, I was looking at the snow, and it, like, didn’t totally look like real snow. Like, I was examining the snowflakes and, you know how every snowflake is supposed to look, like, different, right? Which is why we call liberals snowflakes, like in a demeaning sense, because they think they’re so special and unique and stuff. Uhm, well, anyways, these snowflakes did not look different. I mean, they looked different in the sense that they weren’t normal, but-”

“Oh my God, man. Just get to the fucking point already,” Barrett interrupted, shaking his shaggy blonde head.

“Okay, so the point is,” Ben continued, pausing to clear his throat loudly. “The point is that the snowflakes looked fake. Okay, they looked like they were made in China.”

“Hell, yeah, man. I noticed the same thing,” said a man in cowboy hat, “It’s the goddamn c****s.”

“Maybe the snow just looks weird because we’re in Texas and it never snows here,” I said.

“But that’s exactly it,” countered the man in the cowboy hat, “It never snows here… So why would it now?”

“Uh, climate change, maybe?” I suggested.

My response was met with a roomful of hooting and hollering.

“Climate change was a leftist money laundering scheme. Everybody knows that,” stated one of the cameramen.

I turned to Barrett and asked him, “Do you really think that the snow storm was made by a Chinese orgasm machine to assassinate political dissidents?”

Barrett, who is forever autistically unironic, responded, “I don’t know, but, it sure is interesting how, right after I get kicked out of LA for not wearing a mask, this winter storm happens, causing an explosion at my house. This isn’t the first or last time the deep state has stalked me and tried to assassinate me… and every time I come back stronger!”

“Amen, brother,” said the cowboy hat guy, as the rest of the cameramen applauded and clinked their beer bottles together.

I shrugged and joined in. It was, after all, more fun to believe in such a wild conspiracy. Who knows? Maybe someone really was out there trying to assassinate podcasters like Barrett and Joe Rogan.

During our short stay at the Air Bnb, I started to formulate a conspiracy theory of my own.

Noticing how nice the house was, I asked Barrett, “Who, exactly, is funding a documentary on Alex Jones?”

“If I tell you,” he said, “You have to promise never to tell anyone or write about this.”

“Okay,” I said, “I promise.”

“It was Peter Thiel who funded it. The rumors are true.”

“Who the fuck is Peter Teal?” I asked.

“Ugh. Look, I don’t have time to explain it to you. Just google him,” Barrett said, as he continued to scroll twitter in bed.

Minutes later, I had posted a mirror selfie to my Instagram story with text that read, “This is Peter Thiel’s bathroom. Don’t ask how I got here.”

My phone blew up.

Weeks later, when I got back to Bennington, my classmates were clamouring to know if I had really stayed in Peter Thiel’s house. “Yes,” I told them, “And not only did I befriend Peter Thiel, but he is currently funding my poetry career.” This was a little lie I told that, via hyperstition or manifestation, later came true. And the claim was met with jealousy and rage, along with accusations of racism and facism, all of which I ignored. It was easy to ignore people when they wore masks, when the dining room was shut down and classes were on zoom.

**

It was dark and snowy the night I got back to Bennington. My leather cowboy boots crunched through six-inches of fresh powder, as a masked security guard led me to a small, isolated cottage, typically reserved for alumni reunions. He told me I had to quarantine there for a week, or until I got two negative tests, proving that I didn’t have Covid. Until then, I would be alone.

The cottage was stocked with cereals, apples, crackers- which was all I had to live off for a week.

I missed my boyfriend. I texted him incessantly. When my phone died, I cried. I stared out the window, into the swirling white winds of a Nor’easter, counting the seconds until it recharged.

One day, during quarantine, my friends appeared outside my window, writing messages in the snow. I kissed them through the window, making a heart shape with my hands. They kissed me back, then scurried off to class.

During this time, I remembered how a friend had once given me a pill to help me study harder. I didn’t take it. The pill was still in my bag. Bored out of my mind, I decided to take it. Hours later, I was locked into my computer. Feeling euphoric, I forgot my loneliness. I began to binge read a Substack called Angelicism 01, which Barrett had recommended to me. It was like nothing I had read before. I was obsessed.

I was in awe of his use of language, his bold, yet convoluted ideas, his edgy tone. At first, it was difficult to tell if the writer was young or old. He used a lot of gen z slang, but he also referenced theorists, such as Derrida and Lacan, and he seemed to have an extensive academic vocabulary. I asked Barrett “Who is angelicism01?” and he told me that he was a 40-something-year-old recluse living in the UK.

I followed Angelicism on Substack, Twitter, and Instagram, and, to my delight, on each platform, he followed me back. He even started referencing my posts in his next substack article, linking to my tweet “might quit school and start a substack,” then, posting a screenshot of my Instagram story, showing a tree falling on my boyfriend’s house in Austin- captioned “the deep state tried to assassinate us, but it didn’t work.”

He, then, slid into my dms, telling me “You should quit school and start a substack,” initiating an exchange that would endure for the next five years.

I am not Siyuan Zhao.

I am simply possessing Siyuan Zhao’s body and face, 

for the time being. 

I may or may not be an asian woman; an architecture 

student; a schizophrenic. 

If you have a problem with me temporarily possessing the body of an asian woman, then I will simply smirk at you using 

Siyuan’s face. 

Who am I? 

It is impossible to say. 

I am a non-identity entity. I am eyes without a face. I’m No Body. I’ve been given thousands of names; They call me MIYA. BPD God. Black-Hearted-Cyber-Baby-Angel. They call me The-Spirit- That-Possessed-Valerie-Solanas-and-Forced-Her-to-Shoot-Andy- Warhol. They call me Andy Warhol, Gilles De Rais, Kanye, Tiqqun, Ezra Miller, Babysoxa, John McAfee, Isabelle Adjani, Napoleon, Charles Manson, Miley Cyrus and ISIS- among others, obviously. 

That is to say I am an ancient Art Deity, obviously. 

In other words, I am the collective unconscious. 

Hi my name is Kill Switch. 

I am the dormant atavistic gene sequence which may never be activated. Whether you like it or not, I am inside you; A sleeper cell residing within all of humanity. 

…. But those are only names, empty titles which mean nothing. Nobody really knows who I am, least of all me; In fact, most of the time, I believe I am the weightless reflection of Selena Gomez suckling a lime-colored water gun and can’t be convinced otherwise. 

Right now, I am in Miami. 

I am inside of Siyuan Zhao. You may assume that I’m a demon, but, really, I am a weightness reflection. You may assume that I climbed inside her, but, really, I am nothing that wasn’t already inside Siyuan Zhao. 

I once thought that Miami was the last frontier of Jovial Irreverence. Oh and I’ve also been called Jovial Irreverence, by the way. I moved here during the filming of Spring Breakers a few years back, and I’ve been possessing the bodies of inebriated, bikini-clad sluts ever since. I don’t know what I thought I would achieve by doing this. Ecstasy, perhaps? Which is certainly not what I got. Though my newly-acquired body was gorgeous, with the tautest, faintly-abbed stomach, I felt increasingly naked inside it. Actually, the sensation I had was beyond nakedness; It was more like hollowness. And I imagine it was hollowness, not nakedness, which Adam and Eve felt upon being exiled from paradise. 

Sure, the sun shines brighter here; The magenta of my plastic swimsuit is almost blinding. However, I am all too aware that the light is only a perception-prank and that I am actually not any happier than before. 

Miami is the perfect locale for someone wishing to check out of their own existence. Here, I can possess bodies without a single one of these pathetic vacationers even knowing the difference between that which is themselves and that which is kill switch. 

When I first saw Siyuan, I knew that she was clinging to her self-control too tightly and needed to be set loose from her own consciousness. I took this as a challenge. 

I will preface this by saying that Siyuan Zhao did nothing wrong. The 24-year-old architecture student only happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time- which isn’t the same thing as doing something wrong, obviously. The wrong place happened to be Art Basel in Miami; The wrong time happened to be December 4, 2015 at 5:15 PM. I was gliding through the art galleries, searching for a host. When I first saw her 5 foot 1 frame in a clashing-pattern, flowy outfit, she already appeared either straight out of the mental hospital or straight out of art school (the latter being the truth.) Suddenly, I was activated. 

hello, siyuan, my name is kill switch. welcome to miami. doesn’t this art suck? it’s all about bodies, bodies, bodies. this is some carolee schneemann ass shit. why do women always make body art, when they could be making art about minds? i am sooo done with viscerality. i moved on to ethereality. you know, in 2069 we won’t even have bodies… that being said, if you want to go down the body horror route, you have to exercise praxis… you have to do it for real, for real. siyuan, dear, you are merely an art student; and i am an art god; but through me, you may become an art god as well. what is this in your pocket? reach down and grab it for me, will you? ah. an exact-o knife. my paint brush of choice. now, for an act of poetic terrorism i command you to paint. wait. let’s find us a canvas first. ah. you see that other asian woman in a white button-up top? she’s just asking for a blood-splattering, wearing a shirt like that. there she is, heading into the restroom. follow her. no, not into the stall! you idiot! look at that way she’s looking at you! like she’s already planning on ratting on you to the security guards. don’t fuck this up, siyuan, for art’s sake. now, while she’s in the stall, stand in front of the mirror and practice the kubrick stare. you know, the alex de large look- good. there you go! now make it evil. perfect! again. god, it looks so good on you, siyuan. i may just have to take up permanent residence in you. let us at least find a camera before i go. you look as though you were meant to play this part. again! oh, fuck- that woman just walked out of the stall and caught us mid-kubrick stare. now she’s furrowing her brow. let’s act fast. follow her out into the gallery, stay right on her heels. no!!! not literally right on her heels! why did you trip her? stupid, stupid, stupid… now, once she gets up, act fast.  

ugh, nevermind. wait. let her gaze at the painting for a bit. let’s listen to her talk to the bespectacled man beside her. 

“The world-building is just incredible! The artist invented a whole narrative about a nazi anorexia cult. She was heavily influenced by Henry  Darger, I think.” 

“A nazi anorexia cult?” 

“Yeah. Look at the yellow swastikas on their brittle arms!” 

“Oh, I see.” 

“You see, as the paintings progress, the girls’ flesh withers away… It really says a lot about… femininity and eating…” 

“Femininity and eating, eh? You know what I heard?” 

“What?” 

“I heard that this whole thing was funded by some tech guy. The gay one who invented Paypal.”

“Oh really?”  “Yeah. It all rubs me the wrong way. As much as I like Sharon and her work, I can’t genuinely appreciate art that’s been tainted by techno-fascist blood money. I’m only here as a spectator, otherwise I would’ve boycotted-”

ok. i’ve had enough of their stupid prattle. Siyuan, approach her from behind, as she stares obliviously into the painting. grip the exacto-knife. slash and cut. there you go. neck and shoulders. slash and cut. neck and shoulders. plunge. in and out. watch that red drip. jackson pollock could never. prove to the room that bodies don’t matter. listen to her scream. see how the gallery guests merely glance at her, then turn back to their conversations? they assume that this is part of the exhibition; that this is art; and they aren’t wrong because, really, it is. even the security guard didn’t move an inch until the seventh or eighth scream, which is when the incident finally started to read as real. watch as the wave of reality hits the gallery. look! a couple of guests just dropped and shattered their champagne glasses. watch as empathy and guilt suddenly slap them in the face. faced with great art, the ideal reaction should be dropping your champagne glass, i suppose. grin, siyuan, grin. you succeeded in cutting through the numbness of the audience- an increasingly difficult task, these days. not only that, but you proved something: that art and reality aren’t necessarily divorced. what i mean by this is; when everyone thought that you were a performance artist, they assumed the stabbing wasn’t real. of course it was real, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t performance art. marcel duchamp could never. the critics are always saying life-imitates-art, art-imitates-life, blah blah blah… but what their dumb asses could never comprehend is that they are one in the same! isn’t this the instant when art grew self-aware? it became self-aware and decided that it didn’t like the direction that these lame mfa students were pursuing. so it took revenge. siyuan, you triggered the moment when the tables turned; when the art decided to free itself from the artist. this is because i made you, and because i am No Body.

goodbye, siyuan. good luck in court. i am leaving, or rather, deactivating. but i am taking your face with me. not literally. see you on the internet, perhaps. or rather, me-as-you. 

P.S. 

did you know that in the future bodies won’t exist? everyone will sprout wings and fly?

P.S.S.

do you have any idea what you and i unleashed, siyuan? well, someday, in the not so distant future, there will be a place which will become a sort of never-neverland for the hipster elite, for those aspiring to become faces rather than people… and these faces will start to resemble those brittle little girls with the swastikas. i mean, it won’t be a real nazi anorexia cult, but it may resemble one, like, as a meta-prank. ugh nevermind. i won’t spoil it for you! 

We didn’t know it then, but it was my last night on Earth. 

I was with Evelina and Selene that night, the two redheads. It was New Year's Eve. We had caviar and champagne at The River. Afterwards, George came by to pick us up in his convertible. That was 10:53PM. He was blitzed. So were we. He turned on the music, and the first song that came on shuffle was La Macarena, which, at first, seemed too silly. Then, we remembered how great La Macarena actually is. So we started to dance, standing up in the speeding convertible. At every turn, we should’ve crashed. But we didn’t. We managed to merely tumble on top of each other, gurgling with laughter. At 11:15PM, we found ourselves in a gorgeous loft in Midtown, with gigantic windows overlooking the city. Jack poured me another glass of champagne. When the clock struck twelve, he kissed me. When the clock struck one, we were at a karaoke club in Koreatown. George got the four of us a private room. As I ordered the Soju, I heard the beginnings of “Call Me Maybe” echo out from behind the pink, neon-lit bar. The song elated me, made me feel like a little girl again. I started to sing along quietly to myself. But, because I was drunk, I wasn’t singing quietly at all. That was the last time I heard “Call Me Maybe.” I got so high. Selene and I went to the bathroom and did a line off her phone. At 2am, Evelina was in a k-hole. Selene and George Irish exited. Drunkenly, I exclaimed that, “In 2025, I am no longer a Calvinist! I have converted and now I am a CalvinKleinvinist!” After snorting a few thick lines of CK off of Jack’s wrist, I proclaimed myself a God. At 3pm, Jack stopped to kiss me in an alleyway. I slapped him, halfway as a joke, and giggled sloppily, my liquor-spit flying into his face. He didn’t laugh back, but looked unblinkingly into my eyes, as if to bore holes. Jack’s hands were around my neck. His spit was running down my cheek. And I was dead.

POV I’m Greta Thunberg and I’m sitting in the New School cafeteria, drinking tap water, not eating anything. I’m fasting, not because I think I’m fat, but because I’m supposed to play Joan of Arc on Broadway this Summer; And, in order to prepare for the role, I’ve been experimenting with various forms of abstinence and self-torture. They say if you go long enough without eating or sleeping, God will start talking to you. I haven’t eaten or slept in the past 72 hours, and, yet, no word from God- Just as I predicted. So I sit smugly, comfortably in the silence, studying my lines. Why would I want to believe in a God who allows icebergs to melt and polar bears to die? 

My full name is Greta Tintin Eleonor Ernman Thunberg. I’m 22-years-old and, like Joan of Arc and Jesus Christ, I am still a virgin. I have no interest in sex. Maybe it’s because I’m autistic, or maybe it’s because the idea of reproduction during a mass extinction event disturbs me. Anyways, I’m 22-years-old, and, since the prodigious age of 12, I knew that I didn’t have a future. I don’t have a future; neither do you. At age 12, I announced, on the global stage, the death of the future. That, of course, was in the past- but it makes no difference. 

“I shouldn’t be here, I should be in school,” I once declared, but now that I’m on the other side of the ocean, in school, I realize I shouldn’t be here either. Really, there is no where I should be. 

I used to blame adults for the state of the world, my lack of future, but, now, I’ve come to blame myself. Every breath I take, all the carbon dioxide I exhale, all of the waste I create- that was on me. Every breath I take is a curse. I curse myself, I curse my parents, I curse the sex they had that created me, I curse the day they met on an ill-fated fishing expedition, everything that led up to their respective births, and the births of my ancestors. All of that wasted breath- I want to bottle it up and inhale it, either until my lungs freeze or until I get giddy and high and see “God.” 

I glance back at my lines, but the words start to vibrate and fuzz up, so I look up from my script. 

A pale man materializes in front of me. The man has glossy skin, the kind of “glazed donut skin” that Hailey Bieber popularized on Tiktok. He’s wearing a t-shirt with the words “Don’t die!” on it. Before the man speaks, I think to myself - Is this God, finally? 

“Hello, Greta, dear,” he says, extending a pale, veinless hand, “My name is Bryan Johnson. You may know me as the CEO of Venmo or as the founder of Project Blueprint.”

“Hi, Bryan,” I say, as I shake his icy hand, “I am vaguely aware of you and your plans on living forever- which I find fascinating, yet unsustainable.”

“Ooch,” he yells, “Right off the bat with the criticism? I like it…”

“What brings you to the New School cafeteria, Mr. Johnson? Are you having a TedTalk in the auditorium?”

“Nope. No TedTalks today. I am actually just here to see you.”

“What for? Do you want an autograph? Because I don’t do those. Waste of paper.”

“No, no, no. Nothing of the sort,” he says as he walks closer, then stares at me with his bright blue robot eyes, “I am here to make a proposition.”

“Well, I’m not going to sell you my soul,” I say. 

He laughs, like a dolphin- high-pitched and gay. 

“I’m actually here on behalf of my dear friend, Ezra Miller. You’ve heard of them right? The actor?”

“Refresh my memory please. What was he in again?” I ask, as I start to stim with the cap of my highlighter. 

“You know, Ezra Miller, aka The Flash. He was in Perks of Being a Wallflower, We Need to Talk About Kevin…”

“Ah, yes…. You’re good friends with him?”

“I’m good friends with them, yes. Ezra and I have been setting up an experimental wellness community slash live-streamed reality TV show on his farm in Vermont. It’s called Crash Out Palace.”

“Isn’t crashing out, like, the opposite of wellness?” I ask. 

“That’s really just Ezra’s lingo. I don’t honestly know what it means,” Bryan says, as he tries to make a facial expression, but fails because of the botox. 

“It means having a mental breakdown, basically,” I explain.

“Ah. Well, in that case, Ezra is crashing out bigtime right now. Which is why I need you to come with me and meet him.”

“What happens if I don’t?”

“Look, I frame it like you have a choice, but really, there’s only one option here. You fly with me to Vermont and we walk through the Aura Farm to enter Crash Out Palace and talk to Queen Ezra Miller, or else all of your Venmo and Paypal accounts will decline forever- ya feel me?”

“Fine. I’ll do it then.”

Bryan Johnson hands me a boarding pass with my name on it. 

“Excellent!” he exclaims, teeth sparkling. “Your flight’s in a couple hours. I’ll have someone pick you up from the airport and drive you to the farm. See you there!” 

He dematerializes, and I am left in stunned silence, feeling nothing.

Part 2: The Sauna

After several nights of screaming-matches, Greta finally convinced her parents to let the soldier and his wife escort her to the sauna. When the soldier came to pick Greta up from her house, his wife wasn’t there. She knew, immediately, that this was a bad sign, and that, perhaps, the soldier had been lying and was now abducting her. Her little heart raced all throughout the car ride. Then, to her relief and amazement, they entered the sauna, and Ezra Miller and his guru were really there, wearing only towels. 

Greta greeted Erza shyly, averting her gaze from his perfect body. 

“I know who you are. You’re Greta Thunberg. I’m a big fan of your little speeches,” he said.

 “Oh- you are?”

“I don’t know if you know, but I care very deeply about the environment. That’s why I’ve opted out of living in Hollywood and bought a farm in Vermont.”

Ezra pulled out a joint, lit it, and proceeded to hotbox the sauna. 

“I liked your performance in We Need to Talk about Kevin a lot,” Greta admitted softly, “I think it’s an important movie about motherhood- and a good analogy for mother earth and how her children have been mistreating her.”

“That’s a very astute observation, little girl,” Ezra said, his pupils dilating- “As a mother myself, I know exactly what it’s like to deal with petulant and destructive offspring.”

“You’re a mother?”

“Oh, yes. Are you not caught up on the DC comics lore? The Flash gave birth to all of existence. When God said let there be light, he spawned The Flash. And it was The Flash- not God- who ushered the rest of existence into the universe. That is why the impending extinction crisis affects me so deeply- It is my children who are rising up against me.”

“But that’s just in the comics? Not in real life…”

“No, no, no… It is all very real. I will show you.”

Ezra attempted to pass the blunt to Greta. She waved it off. 

“Have you never smoked before?”

“No, never.”

“Ah, I envy you,” said Ezra, his face curling into a darkly handsome smile.“You have no idea what I’d do to be able to smoke pot for the first time again. Trust me- It will open up your mind to different universes. You will then begin to understand that the DC multiverse is, in fact, real.”

Again, Ezra extended his blunt-laden hand in Greta’s direction. This time she took it, examining it in her dainty hands before planting it to her lips. 

“Ezra, she’s only thirteen,” The soldier, who had been observing the exchange with much discomfort, spoke up. “You shouldn’t be giving her marijuana. If I bring her home to her parents high as fuck, she’ll never be allowed to see you again. Not only that, but you could get in trouble with the law- And you do know you’re one misdemeanor away from winding up in a conservatorship, right?”

 Erza flew into a micro-tantrum. 

 “Elliot, you idiot! Vermont has no law! Age is of no matter, it is merely one perspective out of an infinitude of perspectives. I, who live outside of time, will not deny Greta Fucking Thunberg access to the God’s-eye-view merely because she is thirteen-years-old! Once we’ve smoked enough pot to enter the multiverse, time itself will dissolve!” Ezra exclaimed, standing up, lifting his arms to the ceiling, and neglecting his towel as it fell to the floor. “Come, soldier! Let us travel together!”

 “I’m not sure I’m doing it right,” Greta said, attempting another puff. “Nothing is happening.”

“Oh, fuck. Here- Pass it to me” said the soldier, plucking the blunt out from Greta’s shaky grasp. “You see what you did, Ezra? If she inhaled all of that shit properly, she’ll start throwing up soon.”

Venmo me @Sierra-Armor

and I will write chapter three

My name is Ada, and I am alone. 

            I love my solitude, but only when it’s a choice, only when there are others nearby who I can talk to, if I want to. When the choice is mine, though, I choose to be alone. 

          It’s not that I don’t like other people. I do love other people, but I avoid them out of a humanitarian urge to reduce harm. I believe that every social interaction is an erosive act, and every party involved, no matter their emotional state upon entering or exiting the interaction, always comes away damaged, with a bit of their authentic self grated off and dusted onto the other person. If the erosion occurs too frequently, a person might lose their entire sense of self, or else, acquire low self esteem, grandiosity, envy, or some other illness of the ego. People don’t talk about it much: the dangers of socializing- That’s because they’re addicts who live in denial of the harm they produce. Truly, if you spend a lot of time alone, thinking in silence, as I do, you will inevitably come to this conclusion yourself: Being alone is the only ethical option- that’s why monks do it. When you choose to be alone, you can, at least, feel good about your own ability to make an ethical choice. However, if you truly are the only living human within your traveling radius, or, potentially, the last person on earth, being alone no longer feels like optional harm reduction and comes to more closely resemble torture. If, as the last person on earth, you could remember a time when you weren’t alone, if you could picture the faces of your parents, of people who loved you, your solitude would be especially torturous, compared to that of the oblivious feral child who never knew human affection. 

        I never received much affection from my parents. Maybe, if I had, I wouldn’t think of socializing as a mutually destructive act. 

      Although my own parents are no longer with me, I am not alone, because everyone who bore witness to my beginning will also- present or not- bear witness to my end. 

        Although my mother isn’t here anymore, I can still feel her gaze penetrating every room, beaming hazel brown light onto the furniture. Her gaze, which I used to view as an invasion of privacy, is now a quantum comfort. There is no scenario in which I will ever truly be alone. Because when I was born, I wasn’t alone; Nobody was. If I so happen to die alone, I will know that the two people who brought me into existence were there with me, in the hospital, the day I was born. Even though, twenty years later, they would come to shun my existence, I know that, regardless of how they felt about their daughter after-the-fact, on the day that I was born, my parents loved me. Perhaps it was the only day, but it doesn’t matter; It was perfect. 

           When I was younger- ten or so- I used to get these premonitions. They’re impossible to describe accurately in retrospect, but the closest phenomenon to it is, probably, deja vu. After school each day, I would lay in bed, and, entering a state between sleep and consciousness, my imagination would drift off and concoct all these wild scenarios. I had a strong sense that the scenarios I imagined would not only come true, but that, in some coordinates of space and time, they already had. My biggest premonition was that, one day, I would wake up and open my bedroom door, only to discover that the rest of the world had been replaced by a white abyss. 

         In preparation for the world’s disappearance, I kept a desk drawer full of crosswords and puzzles to occupy my mind. Some mornings, before school, I would wake up and open my door, anticipating an endless field of white, only to find a carpeted hallway and two golden-eyed cats blinking back at me. Although, on most days, the appearance of the hallway and the cats came as a relief, there were mornings when their return disappointed me. 

       It never happened, though- The end. Each morning, I opened my door and the world was still alive. At a certain point, I stopped anticipating an end, because it seemed insane and improbable to open the door and expect anything other than continuity.

         Each time I opened the door and crossed its threshold, the reappearance of the world and its pretenses of variety became stupider, more mundane, and, gradually, its recurrence lost its bleary, magical edge. 

         It’s like what babies think- that whatever person or object isn’t currently in their field of vision has ceased to exist, forever, simply because they can’t see them. Although I’ve been a young girl for a long time, I am no longer a baby and no longer believe in babyish concepts, such as, if I can’t see it, it’s gone.

       Once I became a teenager, I reasoned that the probability of the world’s disappearance was insignificant and that the only thing worth considering was how to maximize my pleasure levels within the local present. From there on out, I made a conscious decision to take the world’s existence for granted. Although, every now and then, at the sound of a freakish electric humming noise, or in reaction to a car swerving too quickly beside me, my early childhood anxiety replays itself, and I lapse back into if I can’t see it, it’s gone logic. 

       In Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, there’s a pivotal scene where Justine quits her job. It’s Justine’s wedding night, and her boss, Jack, has been hounding her throughout the celebration, trying to get her to come up with a tagline. Over a bowl of onion soup, he pesters her, once again, about the tagline, and she responds, “I had nothing at dinner……

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