Shawnita Gilmour, Pet Project for the Titular "Accusers"

 

Bleecker Bob clerk from Seinfeld vs. Samantha Fulnecky

 

BLEECKER BOB: I’ll give you five bucks.

 

KRAMER AND NEWMAN: Five bucks?!

 

NEWMAN: You know how much that essay is worth?

 

BLEECKER BOB: I do. Five dollars.

 

NEWMAN: That essay is worth more than five dollars!

 

KRAMER: He’s gypping us!

 

NEWMAN: You’re gypping us!

 

BLEECKER BOB: Well, what do you got here, she used the Bible as a credible source, didn’t even site the scriptures in it, and she can’t write worth a damn, now come on!

 

KRAMER: Hey, hey, hey, Samantha Fulnecky has a cult following.

 

NEWMAN: They follow her everywhere like a cult.

 

KRAMER: She can’t even walk down the street in Oklahoma.

 

BLEECKER BOB: Well, that’s her problem. If you don’t like it, too bad.

 

KRAMER: I don’t like it.

 

NEWMAN: I don’t like it.

 

BLEECKER BOB: Well, then get the hell out of my store. You bring me some good writing, and I’ll give you some money.

 

KRAMER: Alright, we’ll be back, Jack.

 

NEWMAN: Alright, we’ll be back, Jack!

Salty Cindy

Teaching history? You’re on the wrong side of it

You took your students’ lives, turned them into shit

Yelling and screaming until they hear you from Scotland

If you went further east, they’d launch nuclear rockets

Oral quizzes? You’ve got no fucking business

Put our anxiety on display for millions to witness

Calling us lazy when we worked our asses off

But we believed it like our brains were acid washed

Rushing us through like a military exercise

So that we’d be good drones in a capitalist enterprise

Don’t you know it takes more than a degree

To teach any class, let alone senior history?

Empathy and kindness should be prerequisites

Not a grumpy outlook and marine sentiments

If I wanted to fight a bunch of strangers overseas

I’d have actually said the words, “Sign me up, please!”

But I didn’t, because I’m not a cog in the machine

I have my own ambitions, my own goals to achieve

None of them include listening to your loud voice

The future is mine, I’m the one who makes the choice

Where do you belong? In the unemployment line

Although I wouldn’t even trust you to cook my fries

Wouldn’t trust you to take care of my kitties

Nor my puppies neither, you’d be just as shitty

I don’t even think your own family likes you

Face it, Salty Cindy, you have nothing left to do

You can go get fucked with a rifle’s bayonet

It’s a surefire bet, are there any takers yet?

Like a sex offender, you don’t belong near a school

You belong in a morgue where the bodies are cool

I know this all sounds just a little too extreme

But this is what I do when you fuck with my dreams

Malik Pierce's Napoleon Complex

It could be the Impostor Syndrome shouting through a megaphone and shattering more glass than Stone Cold Steve Austin’s entrance music…but…if there was ever a time to lay daffodils on somebody’s grave, it would be the RPG career of Malik Pierce, a character who goofed up so many times that he became a clownish version of himself rather than a truly flawed character. But how could it be my head voices talking when I just described his character trajectory? Wouldn’t everyone be in agreement? Was the GM trying to cheer me up or did she really see potential in Malik? I sure didn’t. I wanted to toss his ass in the dumpster and set the motherfucker on fire. I wanted that fire to be seen from space, as a reminder to everyone to learn from the mistakes of others.

It was 2006 when Malik made his RPG debut. Because I was nostalgic for my high school days (NOT!), I decided to enter him into a school-themed RPG on an online forum. What kind of background did he have? What was he like? Well, for starters, he was a Filipino sophomore with the name Malik Pierce, which is obviously the most Filipino name I could come up with. He was teeny, tiny, and yet stood tall over his abusive father, for which Malik spent a hot minute in juvie. Okay, so we know he can fight. Now what? Let’s give him drawing skills and a love for A Tribe Called Quest, a rap band who was putting out music long before Malik was born. Hell, there was even a member of that band named Malik, but everyone called him Phife Dawg, may he rest in peace.

Malik was introduced to the game as being tentative around potential friends, most likely stemming from the physical abuse he suffered at home prior to his sophomore year. So instead of engaging directly with the student body, he put on his headphones and let Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad batter his eardrums with sick rhymes and jazzy beats. It was here that he caught the attention of a female teacher who was only a few years older than him. Did Malik have any sexual tension swirling in his brain? Maybe, but he didn’t let it show. This teacher encouraged him to make the friends he needed to, and to come to her for help if he needed it. Long story short, he did just that and made friends with the entire player-character cast of the game.

You probably saw that rushed intro and you’re thinking to yourself: “My, Garrison, aren’t you the biggest galaxy brain in the world! You’ve got show don’t tell down to a science! Why don’t you get that phrase tattooed on your balls?” To which I would respond that I spared you the details because that’s not where the juicy parts of this role-play take place. The introduction to Malik’s circle of friends was so uneventful that I forgot what the fuck happened. If you wanted to be bored to tears, you would read the phone book and not my mini-memoir. You want juice? I’ll give you juice. I’ll give you the Ocean Spray version of what happened to Malik Pierce. Kool-Aid is not real juice. It’s just powdery sugar shit that looks like it goes up your nose instead of in your mouth.

First lesson of today: if you’re in a role-playing game, do not…I repeat…DO NOT sabotage your own character for the sake of a “good story”. I absolutely hate it when players do this shit. They’ll intentionally trip over something or they’ll bonk their head on a brick wall with the idea that their injury makes for an interesting story. It doesn’t. It’s just stupid. Nobody liked it when Bella Swan did it in Twilight and they like it even less when an obscure role-player does it at the expense of the rest of the party. The reason I hate this so much is because I did it with Malik and the results were bass ackwards.

The PC’s and I were in a math class doing our assignments and Malik happened to finish his first like the good little student he was. Thirty-five brain cells minus ten equals twenty-five. If that was the case, it was a miracle he got anything done at all. In Malik’s infinite wisdom, he pulls out his portable CD player, puts his headphones on, and puts on that sweet, sweet sound of A Tribe Called Quest. And because torpedoing your own character meant good storytelling, the volume on Malik’s player was a LITTLE too loud for the teacher’s comfort.

“Malik! Do you mind?!” snapped the math teacher. No response. “Malik, put that away or else I’ll put you in detention!” Surely, I would have learned my lesson that this was going to go badly. But instead, I had Malik give her a “don’t bite my head off” kind of response. The teacher threatened to take away the CD player and Malik wouldn’t fork it over. Instead, our Filipino wrecking machine was sent to the principal’s office. Being the good little lad he was, he went there straight away to confront his own shitty behavior. Just kidding! He sat in the hallway and delayed the inevitable.

And who should run into him? The overly-friendly teacher from earlier. Malik explained what happened to her and she insisted on bringing him to the principal’s office anyways. The principal explained that he couldn’t “undermine” the math teacher’s authority and that Malik’s biggest sin in all of this was talking back to her. If a student insults a teacher, it’s worthy of punishment. But if a teacher insults a student, it’s Monday morning. While that phrase is so true they made a whole Pink Floyd-themed movie out of it, this was all Malik’s fault. Forget detention, this stupid motherfucker needed a firing squad. In that regard, he would have shown more brains in that one instance than he did in the math class. It would have been literal, but it would be true no less.

What’s that? You want more juice? Of course you do, because that’s how you make a screwdriver since alcohol is necessary in numbing your secondhand embarrassment. Very well. You get one more shot of juice and then happy hour is over. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. To set the scene up for this next juicy lesson, there’s an ogre on the football team who’s been bullying the shit out of everyone for far too long. Beatings, screams, gaslighting, you name it, this guy has done it. So Malik’s new circle of friends thought it would be a good idea to have him draw the football stud in an embarrassing light as a measure of revenge. Malik did just that: he drew the football stud as a hideous monster that would gag John Kricfalusi and Gerald Scarfe all in the same day. Also, the bully MAY have had a football sticking out of his ass. Or an American flag. Either way, he was not happy.

After school was officially over for the day, the football stud, dressed head to toe in his gear like a holy paladin who was anything but lawful good, confronted Malik and his circle of friends. This jock towered over Malik like Andre the Giant, but moved a lot more athletically and could no doubt kick the Filipino goofball’s ass. What does Malik do about it? What’s his massive Hail Mary? Well…he takes the role of drama prince and goes into a whole spiel about his abusive past. Malik reasoned that if he could beat his dad’s ass, he could beat the football stud’s ass. Nothing could hurt Malik anymore because he was already dead inside.

And just like that, Malik Pierce became the mayor of Cringe City. He might get a longer serving term than President Xi in China. He’d be just as hated, too. The circle of friends pulled him away from the scene and they gave him a stern talking to. They told him not to be a drama prince. They told him he went too far. They told him he fucked up the whole purpose of drawing the football stud as an ugly creature that would turn any Shrek movie into an NC-17 horror show. Malik Pierce was ashamed, but not nearly as much as I was that day. Something told me that the players weren’t just speaking through their characters. Something told me they really meant that.

These were hardly my first two blunders as a role-player during those years. I made a cyberpunk mercenary look like a whiny bastard. I made a corporate stooge look like a complete idiot. I DMed a Dungeons and Dragons game where the level 15 samurai blitzed through the whole fucking thing without breaking a sweat. My massive ego was so damaged that I thought I should take a break from role-playing. Maybe I wouldn’t ever come back. Maybe I really didn’t know anything about human behavior or good character work. Maybe I was an ineffective storyteller. So I wrote the high school RPG forum a letter telling them about my departure due to no longer having fun playing.

I was half-expecting the players and GM to do cheerleader flips over this. It was probably my Impostor Syndrome shouting from the rooftop. But then the GM responds by saying…”And just like that, I just lost my best player.” Now my Impostor Syndrome was shouting at me like a marine drill instructor. Surely, this GM was just being nice to me. Best player? I don’t think so. I goofed up twice and they were both in colossal ways. Good players don’t do that. It’s one thing to have a flawed character. It’s another thing to have one who’s so flawed that he comes off as tone-deaf and stupid. That’s what Malik Pierce was: stupid as fuck and deserving of his criticism. That’s why I don’t intend to use him again in any other role-play. I might reuse his name since I like over the top names, but the character himself is gone forever. He’s getting the Chris Benoit treatment without ever actually killing anybody.

I’ve made a lot of mistakes during my career as a role-player and GM. Malik Pierce’s story takes the cake. He is easily the most embarrassing character I’ve ever played as. I don’t believe the GM one second when she said that she lost her best player the day I resigned. Am I being too harsh on myself? Maybe. But sometimes a little tough love is warranted. It’s not ideal for self-care, but it is necessary if I want to move on from this mistake. And luckily I did. The role-playing experiences I had after 2006 fucked off forever were MUCH better by comparison. I had a barbarian who rose to the top of MMA fame. I had an art therapist who actually connected to his patient in a meaningful way. I had a socially awkward college student who wasn’t seen as a creep by his peers (which is a low bar to clear, but I’ll take it). 

This story about Malik Pierce is a reminder that sometimes progress and growth aren’t linear. Sometimes you have to take one step forward and two steps back. But when you take those two steps back, you can either fold or you can get better. I’d like to think I got better since then. But I still haven’t found enough duct tape to shut up my Impostor Syndrome.

Mass Transit

 The idea of chowing down on a Hawaiian pizza and BBQ chicken wings made Reese Lee’s mouth water. But in this Peter Pan bus station, it was only an idea and nothing more. It was something that would have to wait until she made it back to her college town. Considering that breathing air in this bus station was worse for the mouth and nose than giving a rim job to someone with a stomach virus, even the idea of getting potato chips from the vending machine was a taboo.

All she could do was sit cross-legged in a chair (preferably one without bubblegum stuck to it) and study for her final exams. Burying her nose in her text book was more appealing than allowing body odor and cigarette smoke to melt her face off like acid. It was even more appealing with new age music blasting in her headphones while she kept her hoodie up. Everything about her screamed “Do Not Disturb”. But who was listening? Certainly not the other patrons.

There they were milling all around the station waiting for their respective buses to take them to their destinations. Some of them had long greasy hair that hadn’t been washed since the Obama administration. Some of them burped loudly enough to jolt Reese out of her studying trance. A scraggly old man in a trench coat puked on the floor, the puddle resembling a prehistoric tar pit. A weary-eyed mother sat on the floor and attempted to rock her crying baby to sleep. A man in overalls and a MAGA hat lit up a cigarette and puffed like a diesel train.

This isn’t worth it…none of this is worth it, Reese thought to herself as she tightened the draw string on her hoodie. No matter how many times she pored over various psychological terms in her textbook like Gestalt and Jungian, they wouldn’t stick in her overcrowded mind. Her brain felt as though it had Novocain smeared all over it. Her eyes watered from the intense smells. Her jaw clamped down so tightly that she was getting a headache. She could just as easily step outside for fresh air, but that would mean potentially missing her bus back to college.

Then again, it might not have been a bad outcome considering that a man a greasy leather jacket marched up to her reeking of alcohol and trash. “Ten-HUT!” he shouted. “The purple monkeys are coming to take our brains! STOP THE STEAL! Blar-blah-BLAR!” He marched to the bathroom, but not without leaving Reese a quivering mess in her seat. Her eyes watered once again, but not from the pungent miasma.

It’s not worth it…it’s not worth it….none of this is worth it…

As Reese tried to steady her nerves with deep breathing exercises (the ones she learned from her psychology classes), the mother from earlier approached her, the baby in her arms fast asleep. With yellow teeth and chapped lips, she asked Reese, “Do you have a cigarette?”

“No, I don’t. Sorry.”

“Come on, just one cigarette! I’m stressed out!”

“I told you, I don’t have any.”

“I’ll kiss your feet if you give me one!”

Bile rose up from Reese’s throat. She threw her textbook to the ground and rushed for the ladies’ room. Unfortunately, time was not her best friend as she vomited on the ground before she could make it. Her stomach contents burned her throat while her eyes watered some more. A few droplets of nose pudding mixed with her biological swamp brew on the ground. Nobody said a word when the motor-oil substance from the old man hit the floor. But once Reese’s acids flew from her lips…

“Fucking gross, lady!” yelled the guy in the MAGA cap. “Is that what they teach you in that lib-tard school of yours?”

Reese wiped the sewage off of her face with the back of her hand before unnecessarily apologizing. The heavy breaths she took wouldn’t do much for cooling down her throat considering the air was thicker than that of a burning building. But heavy breaths she took anyways.

She took even more of them when an obese man in an American flag T-shirt grabbed her butt and squeezed as hard as he could. “Ow! Ow! Let go! You’re hurting me!”

“I bet that shit hurts real’ good, little lady!” said the pervert before hacking and laughing at the same time. Reese was able to pry his fingers off before dashing for the exit. The pervert laughed at her some more when she slipped on the black puddle from earlier. Her back collided with the cement ground and knocked the wind out of her lungs (not that it was good air to begin with). Her MP3 player and headsets broke on the way down, but not nearly as badly as her spirit.

She used the nearby arcade cabinet to pick herself up before (successfully) dashing out of the bus station and into the clean night air. The breeze gently blew against her white-hot face. Every shaky breath she took was pure heaven to her throat and lungs. In fact, it was the only thing about this night that could be described as being remotely close to heaven. She rested her sore back against a graffiti-splattered wall and sunk down to her butt, bursting into a full-on crying session.

The whole reason she went to college in the first place was to study psychology and become a licensed therapist. But even with this wealth of knowledge, she knew the people in that bus station were beyond help. The healthcare system failed them. The world failed them. But she had zero interest in helping them now. 

If that whole bus station burns to the ground with them inside…I’d never be depressed ever again…

While she couldn’t find a gas can and matches with her blurry eyes, she did see something that was almost as destructive: a lead pipe lying on the ground. A rusty lead pipe with a little bit of moss grown over it, because of course it was. She wiped her eyes dry and picked up the non-moss end of the pipe. She could bash a lot of brains in with this weapon. Not that they had brains to begin with, but it’d be a nice visual for her healing.

“I’ll kill them all…I’ll fucking kill them…” she sniffled.

“What did you say? Hello?”

That familiar voice came from her smart phone, which thankfully wasn’t damaged in the slip and fall thanks to the case she bought for it. She must have pocket dialed someone during the whole kafuffle. That someone was her mother. Hearing her voice again was another factor in cooling down her aching lungs and throat.

“Mom? Are you there?”

“Reese, are you okay? Did I just hear you say you’re going to kill someone?”

“Um…” she sniffled. “No, I was just…I mean…Mom?...I can’t go back inside the station. I hate it there!”

“What’s wrong, honey?”

Reese had a hard time forming words through her tears.

“Do you need me to come pick you up?”

“But…I have my final exam soon…”

“That’s not what I asked you. I asked you if you wanted me to pick you up and take you home.”

“…Yes! That’d be wonderful.”

“Okay, I’ll be there in thirty minutes. Hang in there.”

“I love you, Mom!”

“I love you too, Reese. Bye.”

In all this time of studying psychology, Reese had forgotten the most important lesson of all: self-care. Even the most hardworking minds needed to rest. Even straight A students weren’t immune to mental health crises. If her professors didn’t understand these things, they had no business teaching psychology. In that case, studying at this college wasn’t such a good idea after all.

As for the lead pipe, Reese gazed at it for a while, feeling the rusty metal grate against her sensitive skin. She had thirty minutes before her mother got her out of this hellhole. She still had ample time to smash heads and drop corpses. But if she went through with her violence against the mentally-ill bus station customers, she had no business being a therapist in the first place. And if that was true, then learning psychology from these uncaring professors was like a toxic relationship that would never end.

Reese dropped the pipe and allowed it to roll across the sidewalk. “I hate this place. But I hate the system more…” She pulled her knees to her chest and sobbed into her legs some more.

Nobody Wants to Change

 Every year the pattern was the same: two rival debate clubs went head to head and not a goddamn thing changed afterwards. The clapping from the audience was only out of courtesy, not out of impressiveness for one particular side. Everybody in that crowd had already made up their minds, or whatever was left of them after devouring a nice helping of Tucker Carlson’s show later that evening.

Paulo Bermudez recognized this dull pattern all too well. As he sat there on the side of the stage with his head barely perked up, he could see all the faceless minions nodding in mock approval for whoever was speaking. Even his own debate coach, Mr. Diametes Cosgrove, looked like a mindless bobble-head in the crowd, though his civil rights lawyer credentials made him slightly more believable.

Though Paulo and Mr. Cosgrove had their racial differences, the former being a Mexican teenager and the latter being a black Boomer, their struggles as minorities were real to each other. The harsh treatment by white cops, the gaslighting rhetoric of rich pampered politicians on TV, the general disdain from society, they both knew it all. When Mr. Cosgrove asked Paulo to be the captain of this year’s debate team, it was because he saw something in the young man, though Paulo saw nothing in himself and not much else in his opponents.

While Mr. Cosgrove and everyone else in the audience had their best suits on for this occasion, Paulo’s T-shirt and jeans look showed he knew the outcome of the competition long before it was over. The minute his rival captain Cora Yellowwood took the podium in her posh blue sweater and brown skirt, Paulo’s Nostradomus skills were even more heightened. She went on and on about the basic conservative anti-immigration tropes: they took our jobs, they’re joining MS-13, you can’t care about kids in cages if you’re “pro-abortion”.

Paulo’s blood would ordinarily boil over at this kind of rhetoric. But at this point in the competition and in life in general, he couldn’t bring himself to care anymore, because nobody else did. Once Cora was done with her two minutes of hate speech, the audience applauded like they had been programmed to do all these years. Paulo didn’t even snap out of his apathetic trance long enough to hear his own name called by the moderator. The old man had to say it multiple times in exponentially louder voices before he woke up to the nightmare around him.

“Mr. Bermudez! It’s your turn at the podium. You have two minutes to rebut Miss Yellowwood.”

Paulo dragged his sorry ass to the podium and was greeted with insulting shoulder squeezes and hair fluffing from his opponent. The audience chuckled at the gesture, not realizing nor caring how creepy that was. Once Cora skipped back to her seat on the opposite end of the stage, Paulo stared out into the crowd with a mixture of hatred and aloofness.

He allowed the droning audience to absorb his rage before he finally spoke. “You know what this debate competition sounds like? Team Bermudez vs. Team Yellowwood sounds like a UFC event, which is what I wish it was right now.” The audience chuckled awkwardly while Mr. Cosgrove rolled his eyes.

“Mr. Bermudez, please stay on topic,” the moderator warned.

“Oh, don’t worry, I am on topic.” Paulo sighed heavily and read the room some more, wasting valuable time on his two-minute limit. “Truth is, I could stand up here and tell you all about my struggles as a third-generation Mexican-American. I could entertain you all with a sob story about my grandfather escaping violence. But in the end, none of it will mean a damn thing, because nobody wants to change.”

The audience gasped while Mr. Cosgrove face-palmed.

“Mr. Bermudez…”

“Yes, I know! I’m staying on topic like you said! Just give me a few minutes, okay?!” The room fell deathly silent once again. “I could talk here for a lot longer than two minutes and none of it would make a difference. Nobody wants to change their minds. Nobody wants to listen to me or anybody like me. People don’t get into political arguments because they want to see a new perspective. They do it because they want to win. They do it because they want to quote-unquote own the libs.”

“Mr. Bermudez, that’s enough!”

Paulo ignored the warning against him. “Think about it! When was the last time anybody changed their minds because of something I said? Never! It’s like talking to a brick wall sometimes! Actually, no, that’s not true, because at least the brick wall wouldn’t give me a snarky answer or call me a snowflake every time I had a valid concern! The minute Mr. Cosgrove made me the team captain, I should have quit!”

Cora made a hand-job gesture and earned another round of light laughter from the crowd. Paulo caught her. “I’m sorry, am I boring you? Is there anything I’ve said just now that was a lie? Did you do that little masturbation thing because I’m right about nobody listening to me? Or maybe you did it as free advertising for your Only Fans account!”

“MR. BERMUDEZ!”

“Tell me, Cora, what’s so funny about my struggles?!” As Paulo drilled Cora with more angry rhetoric, Mr. Cosgrove emerged from the crowd and grabbed his arm to pull him offstage. Paulo resisted as he continued shouting down his rival captain. “Of course you can laugh about it, because you’ve never been discriminated against in your life! You’re a rich white bitch who never had a day of hardship! You can just throw money at your problems and they’ll go away like that!” Once Paulo was successfully pulled offstage, Cora gave him a raspberry and laughed.

“Let go of me, Mr. Cosgrove!”

He did, but only once they were far enough backstage that they had the alone time they needed. Mr. Cosgrove angrily whispered, “I didn’t go through all those years of Harvard Law School just so you can go up there and act like a jackass, do you understand me?” Paulo breathed both to soothe his anger and warm up his anxious nerves at being lectured by his debate coach. “I made you the team captain because you have a voice. You have strong opinions that needed to be out there. If I did half of what you did out there just now, I’d have been expelled a long time ago, maybe even thrown in jail at some point. You don’t control the crowd by throwing a baby fit.”

“No! You win the crowd by brainwashing them like the sheep that they are. Cora’s good at that sort of thing.”

“So what if she is? It’s your job as a debater to snap them out of it. You actually have to work for their attention. You can’t just give up because it’s too hard. Imagine how many more black and brown folks would be sitting in prison right now if I had given up on them. If you’re so certain that nobody will listen to you, then you MAKE them listen to you!”

“I can’t! Jesus, will you leave me alone! I can’t save the world by myself! If I could, I would! But I don’t have the time and energy to pull the public’s heads out of their asses! I can’t save the world if the world won’t save itself! If you’re so damn confident in your abilities, why don’t YOU go out there and destroy Cora Yellowwood yourself!”

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.” That smug voice belonged to Cora herself, who stood at the entrance to the backstage area with a scorecard in her hand and a cutesy-wutesy smile on her face. “I don’t know if you guys are aware of this, but Team Bermudez is so far behind in the score that it wouldn’t have mattered either way. I got the scorecard right here if you don’t believe me.”

She handed it to Paulo and the defeated look on his face grew even more sullen at the news. “We never stood a chance.”

“That’s right,” said Cora with a wink. “I guess you made people see things your way after all: nobody wants to change. Sorry life didn’t work out for you in the end. Maybe you’ll have better luck debating people when you land your first job at McDonald’s. Do you want fries with that? Here’s why you shouldn’t have fries with that.” She laughed at her own joke. “Well…you can always try again next year. Here’s a little something for good luck.” Despite Paulo’s weakest resistance, Cora kissed him on the lips.

“I’m fairly certain that’s sexual harassment,” said Mr. Cosgrove.

“What’s he going to do? Sue me? Like he’s got that kind of money. Or maybe you’ll do his legal work pro-bono…Diametes!”

“That’s Mr. Cosgrove to you, you sanctimonious little bitch.”

“I’ll be sure to let the Principal know you said that. It’d be a nice test of your debating skills, trying to convince him to let you keep your job.” Cora laughed and waved goodbye before skipping back onstage to accept Team Yellowwood’s victory.

Mr. Cosgrove roughly grabbed Paulo’s shoulders and snapped him out of his sexual harassment trauma long enough to add a cherry on the cake. “In case there’s any confusion as to whether or not this school needs you more than you need them, I’m recommending you for a ten-day suspension for that stunt you pulled tonight. Rebut that.”

Paulo shrugged his teacher’s hands off of him. “I’ll send you a postcard from the Bahamas.”

If he couldn’t afford a lawyer to sue Cora, then he couldn’t afford a ten-day vacation overseas. But that didn’t matter, because the little zinger brought a smile to his own face. It was the first time he smiled that whole night. For just a tiny little while, he believed in his own verbal skills. How long would that last? How would he use that momentum? It was hard to answer those questions with the trauma of Cora’s forced kiss swirling in his head.

All You Ever Gave Me

If the stack of papers on Rosalina Grayson’s desk got any higher, her apartment would need a sunroof. Her grading assignments would be even more repetitive since her students insisted on using the “raindrops on the window” device every…single…time. In her mind, the definition of insanity wasn’t doing the same thing and expecting different results. It was grading the same papers and expecting a reprieve. “I need a bottle of beer. I need one now.”

She strolled down the street to El Segundo Convenience not giving two shits or a flying fuck if her fleece pants and wool sweater gave off an air of laziness. She washed her long brown hair that morning, so that was a plus. Hopefully, the smell of deodorant would cancel out the booze odor that was about to float from her mouth like an acid rain cloud. Being single and having no roommates would have made masking the beer stench obsolete, but still…

She adjusted her glasses and trudged through the entrance of the convenience store, bell clinging, but nobody calling out to welcome her. Then again, being welcome wasn’t a feeling she was used to among students she gave a shitty grade to. The more she dwelled on the inevitable, the more appealing that bottle of Olde English was. In fact, it seemed to have a heavenly golden glow the closer Rosalina got to it. When she untwisted the cap and took a sip, it was like liquid heaven soothing her dry throat.

“You can’t drink beer in the store,” said the clerk behind the counter.

“Sorry about that. How much do I owe you?” Rosalina approached the counter and her eyes lit up just a little bit when she saw who was jockeying the register. “Raf? Rafael Ortiz? Is that you?”

“Yeah, it’s me, Miss Grayson.” Underneath his puffy black hair was a facial expression that reeked of tiredness and disappointment. His ratty gray T-shirt and faded blue jeans showed that he gave even less of a shit about this job than he did before. “That’ll be three dollars for the beer.”

Rosalina dug a five dollar bill out of her pocket and paid for the beer, continuing to drink it now that it was accounted for. “How’ve you been? It’s been a while since I’ve seen you. Congratulations on getting that degree.”

“Eh...” Rafael crossed his arms and rubbed his temples like he was trying to send a subtle message wanting to be left alone.

“So…what are you writing these days?”

“Nothing.”

Rosalina chuckled. “No, seriously, come on, what are you really writing these days? You’re an English major. You’ve got to be writing something.”

Rafael’s tone was slightly amplified when he placed his hands on the counter in frustration. “That’s what I said, I’m not writing anything. At all.”

Rosalina gave an awkward frown. “Oh…I see…So let me see if I’ve got this straight: you spent all that money getting an English degree and you don’t write anymore? Raf, you had potential.”

“I had all the potential in the world, but all you ever gave me was a fucking C+.” He went back to folding his arms and sulking.

“Wow. Do you talk to all women like that or just the ones who give you legitimate criticism? See, that’s your problem, Raf, and that’s what a lot of students these days don’t get: whenever a teacher gives you a mediocre grade, it’s never personal.” Rafael gave her an incredulous look. “Okay, maybe not with all teachers, but for my class, it was never about getting personal. Just because I gave you a grade you didn’t like, doesn’t mean I didn’t think you had potential.”

“Potential doesn’t pay for groceries, Miss Grayson, much less for a bottle of Olde English.”

“That’s true. And that’s why you have to keep working on your craft, so that you don’t get mediocre ratings anymore. The more you do something, the better you’ll get at it. If nothing else, you’ve got a degree that you can wave in people’s faces whenever they give you a hard time.”

Rafael slammed his palms on the counter, leaving a tiny scratch in the glass above the lotto tickets. “A degree? A degree? You mean the world’s most expensive piece of paper?”

“Okay, I’ll admit that college is way too expensive for my liking. I’d love nothing more than to have progressive politicians do something about this, but…”

“It wasn’t just you, Miss Grayson.”

“…Pardon me?” She took another sip of beer hoping he wasn’t going to say what she thought he was going to say.

“You weren’t the only one who thought of me like that. You want to know what my GPA was when I graduated from college?” Rafael leaned in closer. “Two…point…five…”

“…Ouch…yeah, that stings…”

“It does sting. And I happen to be allergic to venomous stings.”

In the middle of sipping her beer, Rosalina gave an approving, “Mmm!” Once she had a clear mouth, she pointed at Rafael and said, “See that? That’s a good line. That shows you have potential. Personally, I would have taken out the word venomous, but other than that, you could use that line in a story someday. Or a poem, either way.”

“Miss Grayson…listen to me…” Rafael’s voice lowered to an intense hush. “I don’t have potential. I never did. That’s why I work here now: because it’s the only job that will let me make at least a little bit of a dent in my student loan debt. Nobody would pay a penny for the words I’ve written. In fact, one teacher said I should be the one paying him.”

“Okay, that’s a little overboard, I agree, but…”

“Miss Grayson…I’m going to die behind this counter. That’s not a suicide threat. That’s not a prediction. That’s a prophecy. This is the only job I’ll ever be good at…what? Something wrong?”

Rosalina sighed in disappointment. “You forgot to give me my change for the beer.”

Rafael opened the register and gave her two bucks. “I guess that doesn’t make me a very good clerk, does it. Almost worthy of a C+, right?”

She tucked her head and almost missed her pocket when she put away the change. “Actually, I was thinking more like a D-, but they’re practically the same thing…at least in your mind, anyways. I’m sorry that my class was a waste of time for you. Have a nice life, Rafael. If you ever want to change your mind…I’m in the directory…maybe…I don’t know…” She sighed in defeat. “Goodbye, Raf…I’m sorry you don’t believe in yourself…”

“It was bound to happen one way or another.”

“I guess so.” Rosalina trudged out of the store sipping her beer the entire way. The more she thought about that conversation, the bigger her swigs became. She didn’t even care if she was stopped by a cop for public intoxication. Maybe she belonged in prison for the crime of denying an entire generation their dreams. She crossed the street, not caring about the honking car almost hitting her. She was lost in her own world as she continued sipping her beer.

At first she thought nothing of the screaming going on in the convenience store. Something about opening the “goddamn register”? Something about not being a “hero”? None of those things mattered nearly as much as the sound of gunfire, which caused Rosalina to drop her beer bottle on the ground and retreat for cover behind a garbage can. She held her knees to her chest and shivered while the robbers fired even more bullets and swore like sailors. The crash of the register echoed in her ears and made her tuck her head further into her knees. Her only saving grace was the sound of gangsters laughing and driving away with their stolen loot.

Rafael was right. He was going to die behind that counter and he just did. He never did have potential because corpses didn’t pen the next great American classic. Rosalina wanted to think that a necromancer in somebody’s story would bring Rafael back to life and make his memory immortal again…but immortality was never meant for mediocre students. All that promise…gone. His soul was crushed by his 2.5 GPA and his body was crushed by a hailstorm of bullets.

All Rosalina had to say about this was…”I need another beer…”

She could have just as easily went back into the store to grab a freebie, but she didn’t want to see Rafael’s body mangled by bullets. She couldn’t even hear him breathe. All those grating noises…and then there was just silence. No spitting up blood. No shallow breaths. He was gone. All gone. But in reality, it was the college, Rosalina included, who pulled the trigger, not the robbers.

“I definitely need another beer…”

Meat and Pudding

The putty-faced student marched down the hallway at the instruction of her teacher. She was to remain a few steps behind at all times, never once complaining or having an opinion about any of this. There wasn’t even to be a suggestion as to this meeting with the schoolmaster being a luck of the draw punishment. No opinions or critical thinking of any kind, just marching. The dragons, elves, ogres, and faeries that danced around her brain were reduced to meat shreds by constant conformity. She didn’t mind. She was never meant to mind.

“Halt!” shouted the teacher, to which the student complied. The teacher knocked on the door, awaiting for the schoolmaster to let them both in. There was some hasty wrestling going on in that office. But the putty-faced zombie student had no opinion of it. Once the familiar Scottish accent ordered her to come in, the teacher opened the door and in marched the student like a good little girl.

The door slammed shut and all that remained was a dimly-lit office with books on shelves and degrees mounted on the wall. None of those books probably contained dragons, barbarians, or knights, and the nameless slave didn’t care. Her weary eyes peeked through her clay mask at the Scottish schoolmaster sitting at his desk, drumming his fingers and scowling at her. His white moustache was enough to give away his age and every elderly stereotype that went with it. His black robe and square cap gave away every ounce of authority he had over her, a mere zombie student in a blue blazer, plaid skirt, and brown leather shoes. And that mask. Oh, that mask.

“I understand you’re wondering why you’re here,” said the schoolmaster in a low and sinister voice. “I can assure you it has nothing to do with the constant whining, missed assignments, tardiness, and everything else your generation is known for. It’s not just you, lassie. It’s the student body in general.” He smirked. “Student body.” There would have been a chilling feeling in the student’s stomach if she was capable of critical thought.

“I brought you here today…because I need to vent…and you are going to listen to every last syllable…” The schoolmaster slammed his palms on the desk and stood up halfway. “I hate this job. I hate the people I work with. I hate the ungrateful bastards who goof off in my class like it means nothing to them. I don’t have time for little goblins who don’t take their education seriously. I could just as easily walk off school grounds tomorrow and wish a pox on this entire place.”

He sat back down and folded his hands. “But I won’t do that. You know why? Because I learned the other day that it wasn’t the job itself that was dreadful. It was because it was…missing a certain something. I need something to make my job more…enjoyable. More fun. More satisfying. Work is boring. But you, my lady…you’re not boring at all…In fact…you’re just what I’m looking for.”

The student trembled, but not enough to give away true emotions. The schoolmaster continued. “Do you know why I make you and so many other students wear that faceless mask? Because then, and only then, do I not have to see the look of anguish on your faces when I do what I do. No face equals no guilt. No squinting eyes equals no shame. As much as I like to laugh at the Twilight nonsense of the world, the author managed to get one thing right.” He stood up and revealed that he wasn’t wearing pants underneath his robe. His sausage-like penis lifted the hem of his robe, maggots crawling around it. “The one thing she got right…is that girls with no ambition…are wildly sexy!”

As he slowly crept around his desk, the student’s trembling became more obvious as she backed up against the office door. He continued. “No ambition means no objections. And no objections means…free consent!” His demonic snickers morphed into howling and cackling while his red meat erection grew longer and stronger. “Come to me, my sweet Mary-Sue! Let’s make both of our existences…a lot more fun!”

The dragons and elves in the student’s mind were screaming to be free, screaming for her to snap out of his conformist haze, screaming for her to stand up for herself. She shook some more. She dropped to her butt as the schoolmaster got closer, his yellow fingernails unsheathed. He reached down to touch her neck, most likely wanting some foreplay, some tender moments with his underage pupil.

And then…the student let out a shriek of terror. The schoolmaster reflexively pulled his hand back and covered his own ears, the shriek growing more unbearable by the second. The student stood up and struggled to untwist the doorknob. The schoolmaster wasn’t deterred for long as his yellow fingernails gently raked down her back and his sausage poked her in the skirted bum.

He whispered, “If you don’t eat your meat…you can’t have any pudding…How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat? That starts to take on a whole new meaning, doesn’t it, lassie?”

There was nothing zombie-like about adrenaline chilling the student’s body like a morgue freezer. She stomped on the schoolmaster’s foot and had him hobbling around like a lunatic. She finally opened the door and stormed down the hallway screaming. But there was no such exit for her. Clay-masked pupils formed a wall in front of her and gazed into her soul with empty eyes. On her other side, teachers and administrative staff glared at her while one teacher bounced a ruler in her hand.

The two sides closed in on her every so slowly, playing the roles of zombies to a T. The schoolmaster pushed his way to the front of the teacher wall and snickered at her some more. The closer they got, the less oxygen the putty-faced girl had at her disposal. She clutched her chest in an effort to stay alert, dizziness spiraling through her mind like a stroke. And then her saving grace came in the form of a steel door, which she threw open and bolted down at top speed.

She pumped the brakes as soon as she saw what this was a hallway for: a meat grinder pit clanking and clobbering in search of its next conformist meal. A dead end and a dead body: such was the way of compulsory education. The zombie students, angry faculty, and Scottish schoolmaster blocked the doorway, making both of the student’s escape options result in death or worse. The schoolmaster stalked down the catwalk and edged the student closer to the meat grinder. She did her best to stay balanced, though her dizziness began to cripple every limb on her body.

“Do you want an A+, lassie? Do you want to graduate? If you want that A+…you’ll have to take a D first!” The schoolmaster’s image blurred in and out of focus, the student swearing she was going to faint at any minute. She needed something to hold onto. A railing on the catwalk? Her own trembling legs? No. The piece of maggot-infested meat that dangled from the schoolmaster’s crotch. His smile revealed nicotine-stained teeth and a slathering tongue. “What are you waiting for? Stand still, lassie!”

“Oh, you big tease,” the student flirted. “Uh-oh. Did I just form an opinion of my own? Too bad!” With one yank of his slimy meat, the masked student pulled the schoolmaster past her and launched him into the mincer. Those blocking the door gasped in horror at their one true master being reduced to farmer’s shreds and parasites. He could have worn a mask to hide his pain, but that wouldn’t have been nearly as satisfying to the student, who removed her own mask in defiance and threw it into the grinder.

“Just so there’s no confusion, I had a name all along. My name is Jennifer Heath. In my humble opinion…I think this school SUCKS!” More gasping erupted from the crowd. Jennifer lifted her dimpled face defiantly and said, “I guess you’ll have to expel me now. But what will I do with my life? Maybe I can work at McDonald’s and serve up some Quarter Pounders coming from yours truly!” There was a collective, “Eww!” from the crowd.

“Oh, don’t act disgusted!” Jennifer snorted. “If you’re willing to allow a pedophile to run your school, then you have no business pretended that something I said was gross. Why did you let him work here anyways? How many more of you had he fucked?!”

“Watch your language, lassie!” said a random teacher while pointing a ruler at Jennifer.

“Or what?! You’re going to hit me with that little stick?! I’m sure some of you have been hit with a much bigger stick in your day.” The faceless students tucked their heads in shame. “Am I wrong? Am I?!”

Suddenly, the students and faculty had a stare down. Opinions were allowed again, not by the authority, but by someone who dared to resist it. The faculty began backing off and holding their hands up defensively. The students were much quicker on the draw. They threw their masks to the ground and stampeded the teachers with riotous force. They screamed obscenities and threw down with their elders, while the stuck-up teachers begged for help. Their authoritarian ways were all an act. They were tough up until the students sung a different tune.

One of the teachers scrambled into the meat grinder catwalk with Jennifer in an attempt to catch his breath.

“We don’t need no education…” sang Jennifer.

“Yes, you do. You just used a double negative.”

Jennifer Heath cracked her knuckles and smiled at her next victim. The teacher swallowed a cannonball-sized lump as it dawned on him what was coming.

The Scatomancer

The lighthouse bathroom was the only one available for miles at Cheney Park. Not a good night to have overstuffed intestines…and an even worse night to be trapped in the men’s room with Johnny Lockwood. The black hoodie-wearing youngster sat in the middle stall with his knees to his chest and amber-colored magic swirling in his hands. His wide grin counted as a bold attempt to stifle his laughter, a low bar to clear for a man with an immature mind. “This is going to be good…this is going to be so good…” A tiny chuckle escaped his throat, but he quickly suppressed it when he heard the steel door burst open and business loafers tapping across the tile floor.

Judging from what Johnny could see underneath his stall door, the thick legs filling out business slacks suggested that whoever burst into the bathroom had a lot of…ammunition to work with. He put his non-magic-wielding hand over his mouth to keep his giggles in check. The corpulent corporate rushed into the stall next to Johnny and pulled his pants around his ankles long before the door could lock. Johnny’s giggles were laced with spitting noises as he saw a yellow stain in the front of the man’s white briefs.

The scatomancer went to work right away, forming symbols and gestures with his hands to cast his first spell. On cue, the stranger’s bowl movements sounded like a bomb going off, the splatter of toilet water suggesting the same. The man’s moaning didn’t deter Johnny from casting another spell, this time shooting feces from his pudgy cheeks like a fire hose. The poor bastard’s grunts and groans sounded more like a dying opera singer performing his magnum opus. Johnny held his aching ribs while struggling to keep his laughs under control.

For his final trick, Johnny pointed his fingers upwards and trembled as the amber magic did its work. The man screamed and hollered as he tried to give birth to a rock-hard wrecking ball, causing little droplets of blood to tap the floor. “Get out of my ass!” he shouted, causing Johnny’s laughter to make him lose control of the spell. The intestinal boulder collapsed into the toilet and completely destroyed it, spreading muddy water all over the floor and moistening its sticky surface. The man wiped his ass with toilet paper, but not without crying out like a torture rack victim. He didn’t even stop to wash his hands. He got out of there as fast as his hulking body could take him.

Johnny howled and hooted with laughter as he exited his own stall, holding his spine the entire time. “Ouch! Ouch! Oh my god, that was gold! Holy shit!” Even after seeing his scatomancy teacher standing across the bathroom with his arms folded in disgust, the hee-haws never stopped. They slowed down, but without making a complete stop. “Owen, did you see that? I got him good! Come on, man, laugh!”

Owen Murphy, a dark-haired middle-aged gentleman with a cloak covering his body (but thankfully not touching the floor) spat back at his protégé. “Multiple generations of potent magic has all come to this, it seems. The lost art of scatomancy has been reduced to a goddamn JOKE!”

Johnny’s laughter abated and his smile sagged into disappointment. “Joke? You mean it wasn’t a joke before? I’m literally a shit wizard! Most wizards like to shoot lightning bolts and fireballs from their fingertips. I control shit!”

Owen slapped Johnny across the face and killed the last remnants of laughter remaining. “You do more than just control shit. You have the power of life and death in your hands. Your little middle school prank could have killed him! Losing that much weight within seconds could have dehydrated him to death!”

Johnny waved him off. “Don’t worry, Master Murphy, he’ll gain all the weight back after he stuffs down a couple more chocolate-covered pork roasts.”

“So not only is lethal diarrhea funny to you, but also obesity. You truly have the mind of a toddler, Johnny. If your father didn’t have so many goddamn connections, you would have been fucked off a long time ago!”

With wide eyes and a hunched spine, Johnny said, “Dude! I’m a shit wizard! You taught me how to manipulate shit! Those jokes pretty much write themselves! So an army of dragons comes breathing down our necks. So what are we supposed to do about it with all of this cosmic knowledge we have? Do we make the dragons shit themselves to death? Oh, that’ll go over like a fart in church! See what I did there?”

Owen death gripped Johnny’s shoulders and made him hiss in pain. The master’s face oozed with anger, seriousness, and a little bit of psychopathy. In a gravelly whisper that could force giants to quiver in fear, he said, “I don’t have time to re-teach you the applications of scatomancy. You’ve had years to process it in your head. It’s more than just shit magic, Johnny. It’s biology. It’s pathology. It’s a pathway to information we wouldn’t otherwise have. So excuse me if I don’t share your immature sense of humor over magic that shouldn’t be toyed with!” Owen gave an extra tight squeeze and Johnny yelped.

He swatted his master’s hands away. “Alright, jeez, you don’t have to bite my head off! I’m sorry, okay! I won’t do it again! Like you said, I’ve had years to process this.” Owen’s mask of rage softened. “But then again…Fudge Tunnel McGee had years to process his string cheese and hotdogs and look how that turned out. Phew! Smells like chemical warfare in here!” Owen face-palmed. “Hey, there’s another useful application for shit magic, I mean, scatomancy: chemical weaponry! More powerful than a nuclear bomb and more radiation cancer! Huh? Yeah!”

Still with his face in his hands, Owen said, “I have lost all respect for you, Johnny. You could have been the chosen one of our sacred order. You could have lived up to your potential as the greatest wizard of your generation. All that time teaching you…it went to waste.”

“You’re damn right it went to waste! It’s all over the goddamn floor!”

“Goodbye, Johnny. I never want to see you again. If your father gets nepotistic on me, I’ll be sure to tell him that you’re a bigger piece of shit than what came out of…no, I’m not giving you comic fodder. You don’t deserve to laugh. I’d tell you to give up magic and get a job making pizzas at a gas station, but…”

“But my hands are too dirty for the job?”

Owen sighed, tucked his chin in disillusionment, and trudged out of the bathroom, dragging his wizard’s slippers across the murky floor. Johnny shrugged his shoulders before Owen poked his head in again. “Oh, and by the way…that gentleman you just pranked? He’s on the Board of Magic Education. His name is Bill Grass. If you want to laugh about how his last name rhymes with a certain expletive, be sure to tell him that to his face.” Owen slammed the door behind him.

“What does he mean by that?”

Somebody behind Johnny cleared his throat and the magician got a lump in his as he slowly turned around to face him. There he was: Chairman Bill Grass, complete with hands on his wide hips and a gorgon death stare on his bearded face. Needless to say, he wasn’t in the mood for comedy.

“Hey, Chairman…” Johnny looked down as he twiddled his fingers and thumbs. “How’s it going?” Bill tapped his foot with impatience. “Eh, I already know how it’s going, if you know what I mean.” Johnny placed his hands over his own mouth, as if trying to put the joke back where he got it from.

“You like jokes, Mr. Lockwood? You like making people laugh? Here, let me help you out with that.” Bill scooped Johnny off the ground, the young wizard begging and pleading to be put down. And so Bill did as he body slammed his attacker onto the scatomantic sludge. Johnny’s back and ribs pulsated with pain as he struggled to take even the simplest of breaths. He wouldn’t have wanted those breaths anyways since they all tasted and smelled like an intestinal plutonium rod.

“Go ahead, Johnny. Get up! Leave the bathroom! I dare you! You’ve got an entire student body gathered outside. You want people to not be so sensitive and have a sense of humor? Well, they’ll be laughing at you for years to come, my friend. Enjoy the attention! You’ll never shake it off again. Oops! I said shake it off in a men’s bathroom. Silly me!” Bill horse-laughed as he exited the bathroom, leaving Johnny in a painful heap on the ground.

Johnny had the choice to punch up with his sense of humor rather than punch down. He could have made something of himself. After that body slam by Chairman Grass, he’ll be the stuff of legend for as long as he lives, but not in the way that Owen Murphy had envisioned for him. Johnny rolled over onto his knees and pounded the ground in frustration, shouting a few curses for good measure. The splash of the toilet water got into his mouth and he immediately puked his guts out all over the floor, becoming an even bigger legend in the process. The best he could have done was laugh with his contemporaries, but his ribs and spine were too sore for that. In a way, his bones were one in the same with his spirit: broken down and never to be fixed again. The only question of the evening was…who’s laughing now?

Debate Club

I joined the school debate club

To annoy the piss out of you

Now everything from my mouth

Is a hundred percent bulletproof

I got an A in my forensics class

My teacher’s so goddamn proud

Now I can win an argument

By being obnoxious and loud

There’s no topic that’s off limits

No matter how petty and small

I could have been a politician

I’d rather watch you fucking fall

Cut the sodium out of your diet

Eat some lettuce heads instead

Don’t be an ass in videogames

Give them a chance to get ahead

Don’t wear those ugly sweatpants

Wear a jacket, slacks, and tie

You can have your mediocre job

All you have to do is try and try

You can raise your middle fingers

But we know that’s immature

You can call me on my bullshit

Or call me out on my cow manure

I don’t know when to shut my mouth

I don’t know when I’ve lost the fight

Maybe if I debate my way to the top

I’d be a centillionaire over night

That money doesn’t even exist yet

But I can make it happen anytime

I’d rather put my skills to good use

And list off your every little crime

Is that a smoke wagon in your hand?

Are you putting it to my noggin?

Have you had enough of me yet?

An extreme way of saying, “Stop it!”

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!

It’s the only way to shut my ass up

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!

I’ll tell the devil you said, “What’s up?”

Remember

CHORUS 1

Remember that school is not about learning

It’s about how many F’s you’re earning

Remember that college is not about growth

It’s about how much money you’ll owe

VERSE 1

Roger Waters had it right all along

Bricks in the wall written down in a song

Don’t want to grow up to be like my teachers

Especially the ones who could pass for preachers

Raise your hand and ask your stupid question

Everyone’s laughter leaves an acidic essence

The report card reads like a crucifixion

Do you still know that it’s only pulp fiction?

CHORUS 2

Remember that school is not about friendship

It’s about tests and assignments so endless

Remember that college is not about skill

It’s about drowning your sadness in pills

VERSE 2

Nobody thinks to befriend the weird kid

Only the beautiful and clearly fearless

Nobody thinks to break the shyness

Of those who live in shadows and silence

CHORUS 3

Remember that school is not about achievements

It’s about keeping your demons a secret

Remember that college is not about jobs

It’s about telling the bullies to fuck off

Remember that love is truly exclusive

Remember that friendship is elusive

Remember that nothing is meant to last

Except the voices of your broken past

BRIDGE

Wash your clothes and cut your hair

Apply for your job like you actually care

The money and benefits just can’t compare

But you know how this ends and it’s unfair

CHORUS 4

Remember!

Remember!

Remember that your teachers are not your friends

Remember that the students aren’t yours to defend

Remember that the curriculum is useless as fuck

Remember as you hold onto your very last buck

Remember!

Remember!

FINAL LINE

Remember I will always love you…if you give me a chance

The Sadness Olympics

Melanie Chappell’s legs rattled underneath her graduation robe while her mind bombarded her with traumatic images. Every gunshot. Every scream of death. Every splatter of blood. And then the coup-de-grace: one final bullet from the shooter’s gun aimed at his own head. Just like that it was all over, but in Melanie’s numbed out brain, it still went on.

How dare these students and faculty members carry on without her? How dare they leave her behind while she suffered silently? Her grades could get her into any school she wanted, but all the A+’s in the world couldn’t take away pain that would last forever…or at least until she deemed fit to use the undetected metal device in her pocket.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage our valedictorian, Miss Melanie Chappell!”

The numbness wore off as she realized Principal Jeff Nygard’s voice summoning her to the podium. She just then remembered she was at a graduation ceremony. It took too long for the applause to register in her mind. Even the fancy purple and green colors of Principal Nygard’s wizard-like robe blended in with the rest of Melanie’s pitch black world.

High heels aside, Melanie’s legs nearly buckled underneath her as she staggered to the podium. Going back to bed was better than listening to these claps, which sounded too much for her comfort like repetitive gunfire from an AR-15. Instead of cycling through what she was supposed to say, she contemplated what the acronym AR stood for. Asshole Redneck? Aryan Race? Ammosexual Romance? She would have smiled at that last one if she didn’t nearly fall over the podium. Luckily, Principal Nygard’s hands were there to catch her.

“I’m okay,” she unconvincingly whispered to Nygard.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m fine…at least I think so.”

As Principal Nygard took his seat at the back of the stage, the concerned faces of graduating classmates washed over her war-like mind. While gunshots and blood splatters still smashed her mind into fragments, she believed the students’ reactions to be underwhelming for what had just happened a month ago. Had it really been a month? Or was it five seconds ago? Who gives a fuck, it’s never really over, she thought to herself.

Melanie attempted to adjust the microphone to her mouth and did so poorly. She stalled for time with a few halfhearted coughs. When time became a bigger enemy to her than the incel with the gun, she wiped away a singular tear and tried her damnedest to speak.

“Thank you all for coming out here today.” God, that sounded stupid, she thought. “I, uh…I know you all…this isn’t the end of…” Tears splashed around her eyeballs as she struggled to compose herself. Fuck it, I’ll go with it.

“A month ago, something awful happened at our school. I won’t go into the specifics of it since it’s fresh enough in everyone’s minds as it is. Many of our classmates died that day. Their families will never get to see them achieve greatness. Never see them smile again. Never erase those memories from their minds. And…while we can all agree to come together and give each other comfort and strength…not everyone on the internet sees it that way. In fact, there’s a…disgusting hashtag going around social media called The Sadness Olympics. It’s used by trolls who want to mock what we’ve been through, to protect their so-called second amendment rights, to…to…”

Melanie’s words became scrambled as silent tears dropped from her eyes like waterfalls. She could feel Principal Nygard’s hand on her shoulder, a sign of the comfort she spoke of before the most disgusting hashtag on the internet left her mouth. Jeff whispered, “If you need to leave the stage, you have my permission.”

“No! No…I’ve got this, Mr. Nygard. I’ve got this….”

Once he sat back down among all the other wizard-robe-wearing faculty members, rage bubbled from beneath Melanie’s skin like a murky, venomous swamp. Despite the tears rolling down her face, her expression said, “Do not fuck with me!” without those words actually coming off of her tongue.

“To whoever’s circulating that hashtag, I’ve got a message for you,” said Melanie. “You’re every bit as evil as the gunman who came to our school. You may not have pulled the trigger, but make no mistake about it, you’re a murderer!”

“Miss Chappell, please!” begged Principal Nygard.

“Shut up! I told you I’ve got this!” The whole auditorium along with the school Principal fell silent. “The fact that people think our suffering, my suffering is funny makes me sick to my stomach. People like that are the whole reason our country is going to shit.”

As the audience gasped at the swear word, Principal Nygard spoke up once again. “Miss Chappell, that’s enough! Please leave the stage, if not for us, then for your own benefit!”

“I told you I’ve got this, Mr. Nygard, now sit down and shut up! It’s what you do best!” His face grew red with embarrassment while his jaw nearly touched his lap. Melanie’s silver-tongued rhetoric continued. “The only thing that makes me sicker than that hashtag is the fact that it’s being used by some of our own students, many of whom are here today! I see you out there! You think this is comedy? Fine! You can laugh while your guts are spilling out of your body! You can literally laugh your head off as a bullet passes through it!

“And now that I think about it, maybe I shouldn’t be so mad that a shooter came to our school with a AR-15 or whatever the fuck it’s called! Hell, I would have come in with an army tank if I knew where to find one! I’d still be traumatized! I’d still wake up in the middle of the night trying to recover from a shitty dream! But you know what? If it means you hashtag warriors, you Sadness Olympics comedians, will get what’s coming to you, it’d be worth taking Xanax for the rest of my life! I can’t even afford it since it’s a controlled substance, but if Principal Nygard has taught me anything, it’s that it’s all in my head, a head which should be filled with ‘thoughts and prayers’, by the way!”

The students gasped once again as Nygard’s tone grew more serious. “One more outburst from you, Miss Chappell, and I’ll withhold your diploma! No more of this nonsense, you understand me?!”

Suddenly calming down, Melanie turned around to face her Principal with dewy eyes and a neon pink face. “Yeah…yeah, I understand, Mr. Nygard. I really shouldn’t have gotten off track like that. Sorry. I forgot we were supposed to be taking away each other’s pain, not shuffling it around.”

Facing the students again and adjusting the microphone nervously, Melanie’s streak of calmness continued. “Truth is, I don’t really have a solution to your traumas. I don’t even have a solution for my own. I don’t really know if we’re going to have another school shooting or not. I don’t know if we’re going to get more from our government than so-called ‘thoughts and prayers’.

“But one thing I do know…is that I don’t want any part of this. The graduation ceremony, the diploma, the college debt I’ll rack up…it’s all for nothing if my nightmares won’t leave me alone for even a few seconds. It’s all for nothing if internet trolls are just going to keep cracking jokes about us. So you know what I say? Before another horny incel has the chance to gun me down…I’ll strike first.”

In one swift motion, Melanie pulled a pistol out of her pocket and blew her own brains out, sending one final message to her fellow classmates. A message that hope is only an illusion, comedy isn’t fun anymore, and “thoughts and prayers” is just a phrase as empty as Melanie’s exploded skull. She could have sworn she heard screams everywhere around her, but only for a few seconds before her body went completely limp. What’s one more trauma to these people, right?

Freedom of Information

CREEPY CHILDREN’S CHOIR X2

Tell on a gang

Look for friends

Take a course of action

And throw him in the sea

SCREAMING LINE 1

Get the fuck out of my head!

VERSE 1

Those words are not yours to read

You weren’t the one who had to bleed

You never had to hide your shame

You never had to change your name

CHORUS

Freedom of information

Public humiliation

Classroom comedy

Psychological sodomy

SCREAMING LINE 2

What are you fuckers laughing at?!

VERSE 2

An immature sense of humor

Labeling everyone a loser

Laughing at everything in sight

You never had to run and hide

CHORUS

Freedom of information

Public humiliation

Classroom comedy

Psychological sodomy

BRIDGE

Don’t minimize this horseshit

It’s not so easy to fucking forget

Punish these chuckling morons

Before somebody chugs Clorox

VERSE 3

Thank god I’m done with this shit

There’s nowhere in class to sit

I’ve washed my face full of spit

No longer treated like a kid

CHORUS

Freedom of information

Public humiliation

Classroom comedy

Psychological sodomy

CREEPY CHILDREN’S CHOIR

Tell on a gang

Look for friends

Take a course of action

And throw him in the sea

SCREAMING LINE 3

Piss off, you little shit weasels! Ugh!

I'm Not Laughing

BEEP! “Dr. Love, your twelve o’clock is here to see you.”

“Send him in.”

Claire Love sat in her easy chair with her high heeled feet propped up and a cup of rosemary tea in her hands. The smell relaxed her senses, but not enough to keep the barrage of questions from swirling in her mind. How would she tell Alexander Percival what she needed to tell him? What would his reaction be? Would this put a strain in their therapist-client relationship? She took a sip of hot tea and closed her eyes as she waited for her client to enter her office. Just to show she was serious about trying to relax, she pressed a button on her remote and played gentle piano music on the stereo. Still not enough to put her at ease.

There was a knock on her door and upon being told to come in, Alexander Percival waddled in the room with a Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand and a worried expression that equaled his therapist’s. “So what’s the emergency, Dr. Love?”

“Thank you for coming by on such short notice, Alex. Please, have a seat. Get comfortable.”

He took his gray hooded sweatshirt off and hung it across his own easy chair, complete with its own footrest. His dismal expression told the story of not being able to relax despite the cushy chair’s comfortable features. He sat with his spine hunched over and his fingers drumming on the coffee cup.

Claire placed her tea mug on the coffee table and took deep breaths as she tried to come up with the right words to say. “Alex…I want you to know that…I enjoy these sessions of ours. I really do. I enjoy learning new things about you. I enjoy giving you healing when you need it the most. Nothing will change that. However…I want to preface this by saying…I know you don’t actually have hostile feelings towards women.”

“…What? What are you talking about?”

Claire pulled an iPad out of the coffee table’s drawer and scrolled through it as she explained herself. “I went through your Twitter feed last night. I saw something there that upset me deeply. This Tweet goes a while back in your history, but it’s still there and it still gives me chills every time I read it. In this Tweet, you’re doing a parody of feminine hygiene product commercials. And…my stomach hurts reading this out loud…you said…‘If it smells like dead fish and you’re nowhere near the ocean, buy a shipping container full of…Vagisil Pussy Wipes.’”

Alex’s massive hand trembled so badly that he spilled a little bit of coffee on his blue jeans. He gave a tiny yelp and wiped the stain off with the belly of his shirt.

“It doesn’t end there,” continued Claire, swallowing a wad of saliva. “In a similar Tweet, you refer to tampons as Tampax Tube Steaks. You also refer to maxi pads as Blood Huggies.” Holding her palm against her aching stomach, she placed the iPad back on the coffee table and said, “Alex, do you see where I’m going with this? I know you have a weird sense of humor, but this goes beyond comedy. Comedy can’t be comedy if it’s not funny. These kinds of jokes will do more damage than good.”

Alex downed the rest of his coffee and tossed the Styrofoam cup in the rubbish bin. He hunched over and ran his trembling fingers through his thick brown hair. He seemed to have a more difficult time coming up with the right words than his therapist. She even detected a tiny tear dropping down where his coffee stain was.

“You know what this conversation reminds me of?” he said with a shaky voice. “It reminds me of being back in college with a creative writing professor who wanted me to submit only G-rated stuff. I couldn’t have any R-rated fun around her and she threw it in my face all the time. I gave her what she wanted…and all I got was a lousy C+ in return.” He lifted his blushing face. “I feel like you’re trying to censor me, Dr. Love. I don’t want to be censored.”

“Alex…listen to me….this is not about being R-rated, G-rated, PG-rated, or whatever. This is about using common sense. Your Tweet was buried so far beneath the rest of your history that you dodged a bullet when it came to getting backlash. But what if the wrong people saw that Tweet? What if you finally managed to find a girlfriend you liked and she read that? What if your boss read that? What if your writing became famous one day and a media outlet picked up your Tweet? Are you really prepared to defend those jokes against the ones who mean the most to you?”

Alex’s voice grew even shakier than before. “So what? You want me to ask you for forgiveness? You think I don’t know how the online mob mentality works? I could ask for forgiveness over and over again and it won’t make a difference. I could literally be on my hands and knees and it wouldn’t be enough. I gave up on asking for forgiveness a long time ago.”

Claire took a sip of tea to settle her anxious tummy. “Alex, you don’t have to ask me for forgiveness. I already forgive you. It’s not my job to cast stones at you. Unconditional love is a prerequisite for being a sex therapist. But you’re right about one thing: those other people might not be as forgiving as me. Which is why it’s important that you do something about this Tweet before everything spirals out of control.”

“You want me to delete it? Why? So that I can prove the conformists and gatekeepers of the world right? So that I can remind them that they can do whatever they want to me without resistance? This is a free country, Dr. Love. I don’t have to justify my first amendment rights to anybody.”

“That’s true. But there’s something you should know about the first amendment. It protects you from the legal consequences of free speech, not the social consequences. In other words, you won’t go to jail for anything you say as long as you don’t defame anybody. But free speech is a two-way street. If you have the right to make sexist jokes online, then your critics have the right to respond to you however they want, not the least of which is labeling you a social pariah. Alex, if you want to be in a creative field, you have to learn to take criticism gracefully.”

Claire could tell that Alex was doing his damnedest to hold back his tears and shield his red face. He shook some more as he refused to engage his sex therapist.

“Alex, you don’t hate women. I know you don’t. That’s not who you are. But when I read those Tweets, as a woman, I think to myself…I don’t feel safe around this person anymore.”

Another small tear splashed onto Alex’s jeans. It was obvious to Clare that he couldn’t stand breaking down in front of a woman whose job it was to build self-esteem. He pulled himself up and staggered towards the door.

“Wait, don’t go!” Claire pleaded. “Please. Just do me this favor.” Handing him the iPad, she said, “Delete what you’ve posted. This isn’t about censorship. This is about your life. This hatred is not worth defending. You’re better than this.”

“Better than what, exactly?” said Alex with a sniff. “Better than a C+ student who couldn’t hack it with a G-rating?”

“Please, Alex. I know you’re hurting now, but you’ll hurt even more if this joke circulates to the wrong people. Nobody’s asking you to change who you are. I’m just asking you to use some common sense. Please…delete these messages. Do it for the women in your life who trust you and love you.”

Alex’s breathing became labored as he wiped another tiny droplet out of his eyes. He kept his back to Claire as if to stall for an answer, as if this choice was the most difficult one he’d ever made. She could see that he thought his individuality was on the line and she knew nobody should have to compromise that. But in the end, Alex turned to face her without lifting his head. He reached for the iPad and sat back down to do his work. After a few more long seconds of stalling and refusing to crack, he tapped the screen a few times and handed the iPad back to his therapist.

“It’s done. The Tweets are gone.”

Claire breathed a sigh of relief and said, “Thank you so much for doing that for me. How do you feel?”

Still refusing to lift his head, he answered, “Hurt…defeated…controlled…embarrassed. I’m an English student, I should have more words for it somewhere. Humiliated…sorrowful….”

“I know you’re hurting, Alex, but whether you know it or not, you did the right thing by deleting those Tweets. You’re not a sexist. You’re just a guy who made a mistake. You don’t need to be punished for it by the online mob.”

Unable to hold back any longer, Alex’s tears came more frequently and his voice grew even shakier. Pouting sympathetically, Claire crossed the room and cradled his head in her arms. “It’s okay, Alex. It’s okay. I forgive you. Let it all out. You are an amazing human being. You are sweet. You are kind. But most of all…you are loved. After our sessions are over, I’m sure you’ll find a lovely woman who’ll agree with all of those things I’ve said.”

“Crying sucks. Goddamn, I’m such a snowflake.”

“No, you’re not. Snowflake is a derogatory term for a natural emotion. You’re just a highly sensitive person. And to be honest…I like that in a man. Now, what shall we work on today?”

The embrace was broken and Alex snorted more salty liquids up his nose while wiping his tears with his shirt sleeve. “Can I have some of that tea?”

“Of course you can, Alex.”

Walk in the Rain

The nighttime rainfall tapped against Cassandra Bride’s office window while she sipped her peppermint tea. Christmas lights strewn above her ceiling illuminated an otherwise dark atmosphere. She smiled while relaxing into her favorite office chair. Such a peaceful time of night. She should have been in bed with a Lilian Jackson Braun novel and a kitty. Deep inside, she knew this conversation had to take place and it couldn’t wait until a brighter morning.

She took one last sip of tea before there was a knock on her door. “Come in,” she said. Slogging through the office in a soaking wet hooded jacket was Jarrod Crews, a young man with short black hair and a Seether T-shirt underneath his rainwear. He removed his coat and hung it up on the rack in the corner, not even bothering to dry it off. His social skills were always a mess, so at least a drippy coat was forgivable.

“Sorry I’m late,” said Jarrod while taking a seat across from his acting teacher.

Cassandra laid her cup of tea on the desk and waved as if it was no big deal. “It’s not your fault, Jarrod. It’s wet out there. If I would have known you didn’t have a car, I would have dispatched another student to give you a ride. Any moment now we should start getting thunder storms.”

Jarrod’s eyes darted from side to side while he fidgeted with hangnails on his thumb. “So…do you want to tell me what this is all about?”

“Of course, of course I do. But first I want to thank you for agreeing to see me tonight in my office. I’m sorry you had to walk through a rainstorm, but this actually is a pretty important topic.” Cassandra cleared her throat and straightened the straps on her black dress before leaning forward with her hands supporting her chin.

“Am…am I in trouble?” asked Jarrod with a jittery voice, either from the cold weather outside or his own nervousness.

Cassandra breathed a deep sigh and hesitated before starting the necessary conversation. “Jarrod…is has come to my attention that you have some ulterior motives for signing up for my acting class. Like the rest of your classmates, you probably saw me in the made-for-TV movie My Gift to You, where I played a demonic seductress. The only difference is, you took your fandom a little too far. You can deny it all you want, but Mr. Crews…I believe the only reason you signed up for my class was so you could be close to me. You have no other classes in your schedule. This is your first quarter at Kelly University. The pieces are all there. You got caught…by me.”

Jarrod nearly jumped out of his skin when the first lightning bolt flashed outside. His breathing was labored, but for a far different reason than the combination electromancy and aeromancy going on. “Who told you all of this?”

“Your own mother, Jarrod. She called here the other day to have a chat with me about your…extracurricular activities. She read me passages from your diary. She logged onto your computer and found pictures that have no earthly business being there. Jarrod, this is not okay. I don’t feel safe around you anymore. You know where this is leading, right?” Tiny droplets welled up in the student’s eyes. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

Jarrod slapped his legs and gave a short, sorrowful laugh through his tears. “I mean…you’re not wrong. You caught me red-handed. So, that’s that, right? I should just go back to my dorm and pack my suitcase?”

Just as Jarrod stood up, Cassandra motioned with her hand for him to sit back down. “Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. Not just yet. There’s a lot more to discuss than just a simple expulsion.”

The student slowly sat back down and chewed on his fingertips while smiling sadly and shaking his head. “What else is there to discuss? You have everything you need. My own mother basically ratted me out to you.” Jarrod held his face in his hand and sobbed a little bit. “You’re getting way too much pleasure out of this, Mrs. Bride.”

“You’re wrong, Jarrod. There’s absolutely no joy in this for me. For all intents and purposes, you were a hardworking student who gave A+ performances when you needed to. This hurts me just as much as it hurts you.”

The crumbling student man-spread his legs and tucked his head down as he tried to find the resolve to continue this conversation. The wetness in his face, the redness in his cheeks, he was easy pickings for Cassandra Bride. She had to admit that he put on a hell of a performance, yet again.

“I’m not talking about you expelling me from school. That part I get,” blubbered Jarrod through heavy breaths. “But why did you have to go behind my back like that? You got my own mother to throw me under the bus. For what?”

“She didn’t throw you under the bus, Jarrod. She called me that day because she’s worried about you. Like I said, this isn’t just an open and shut case that can be solved with expulsion. Aside from your sexual obsession with me, there’s more than she told me about you.”

“Oh god,” stammered Jarrod as he chewed on his fingertips some more.

Taking a sip of hot tea, Cassandra said, “Your mother tells me that you have a hard time making new friends. She says you’re depressed and isolated all the time, so instead of forming real relationships, you hover around me and feed your fantasies that way. She tells me that it’s been a while since you’ve seen your therapist.”

“Okay, enough! Enough!” snapped Jarrod while holding his hands up defensively. Another lightning strike flashed in the sky, but he refused to be deterred. “I get it! I’m an emotional train wreck! And yes, I do have a hard time meeting new people. You know why? Because every time I think I have something, my mom and dad take it away from me when they move to a new place. And then what do I do? Start over? Take another chance? Bullshit!”

“You know, Jarrod, you can do something about that. You’re old enough to make your own decisions. If you don’t want to move around to different cities all the time, then you can just…”

“I can just what? Find my own place? Have you seen how much an apartment costs these days? Have you seen the job market lately? There’s nothing out there for me, unless you consider sleeping at a bus station and begging for handouts to be good living.”

Cassandra set her tea down again and wheeled her office chair towards a crumbling Jarrod Crews. She placed her hand on his shoulder and elicited an, “Oh god!” response from him.

“Listen,” she said. “I know it’s tough out there. When I left my acting career and became a teacher, I didn’t know anybody here at Kelly University. I was scared just as you are now. But ultimately, you have two choices. You can move back in with your parents and have financial security and love for as long as you need it…or you can swallow your pride and find potential roommates with the friends you make here. You can’t keep doing this to yourself, Jarrod. Either choice is a valid one, but when you make that decision, you need to reap all of the benefits that come with it. I get it. You need love. We all do.”

Jarrod wiped the tears from his eyes with his shirt sleeve and said, “I know you told me that we have a lot to discuss…but this is getting really fucking awkward, Mrs. Bride. I don’t want to be here anymore. I’m not even sure expulsion would be a bad thing for me. If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll just grab my coat and fuck off forever.”

Just as Jarrod stood up to grab his coat, Cassandra offered, “Are you sure you don’t want a ride back to your dorm? Trust me, you don’t want to walk in the rain a second time tonight.”

The lonely student looked down at his shoes and sighed. “You know what? I think I prefer getting hit by lightning over having another awkward conversation with you, Mrs. Bride.”

An even louder thunderbolt shook the skies as well as Jarrod’s foundations as he jumped skittishly yet again. Cassandra asked, “Are you sure about that, Jarrod?”

He shrugged his shoulders and smiled sadly. “Well, you know what they say: you’re more likely to be killed by a terrorist than you are to be struck by lightning.”

Cassandra smiled amusedly. “No, no, no, Jarrod, you’ve got that bass ackwards. You’re more likely to be hit by lightning than you are to be killed by a terrorist.”

“…Really?....Oh…Well…What if it’s an incel terrorist?”

“Then your chances slightly increase, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is, I’d rather you allow me to give you a ride back to your dorm instead of getting rained on again.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t you the one who said you didn’t feel comfortable being around me?” asked Jarrod.

Cassandra sighed and tucked her head while her now ex-student put his jacket on and ventured outside in the pouring rain. “Was I too hard on him?” she asked herself. Not even the delicious flavor of her peppermint tea could relax her on this one. Everything that could have gone wrong in this “important conversation” did go wrong. She lost a great student, Jarrod lost an opportunity to open up, and everything got incredibly awkward. But Murphy’s Law didn’t stop there…

Another bolt of lightning tore up the sky, but this time the sounds of Jarrod wiggling and screaming echoed throughout the rainy weather. “Oh my god!” gasped Cassandra as she dropped her now shattered teacup on the floor. Even wearing high heels, she managed to bolt out of her office and lend her help to a now jittering Jarrod Crews.

There he laid convulsing violently with wide eyes and a foaming mouth. Now it was Cassandra Bride’s turn to lose a few tears as she held her hand to her mouth in shock. She knelt beside him and cradled his head in her lap. “I’m so sorry, Jarrod! I’m sorry!”

Even with a shivering body, Jarrod managed to form a complete and coherent sentence with a smile on his face. “So this is what it’s like to be held by somebody…I never knew that before…” Cold, miserable, and electrocuted, Jarrod’s head flopped over and his eyes rolled back in his head. Cassandra placed two fingers on his neck vein and felt no pulse surging through him, just electricity. He died taking a little piece of heaven with him before he went.

Cassandra teared up some more as she hugged Jarrod Crews’s lifeless skull. During her moment of apologetic cuddling, she noticed two wire prongs attached to his chest that led to a stun gun lying on the ground next to him. Scratched onto the weapon was a message as clear as the day that would come: “Incel Pride Worldwide”.

The actress’s sorrow turned into jaw-quivering fear at the revelation that her student was murdered. She could hear footsteps running away on the concrete sidewalk, but it was too dark to make out who they belonged to. By the time the perp was illuminated by the streetlamp, he had already turned a corner and hightailed it out of there.

What if there were more of them? Who else signed up for Cassandra Bride’s class under false pretenses? Was Jarrod Crews the only intended victim? What if…she was next? These thoughts raced violently through her head, which was now cradled in her own hands in a lame attempt to contain her fear. “I’ve got to get the hell out of here…I can’t stay anymore…”