We've got something of a situation out here, we've got 'em running scared. Here there is no law, there are no questions and no answers. Out here we make the rules, us wise men, us pontificating professors, scholarly and just as we are. This town belongs to us now. Out here it's an academic pandemic, it's a bookworm bonanza. If you don't want to get hurt then come no further, because some of these guys, they're crazy. They'll remove your arms at the elbows, collect 'em in a plastic bin, and cook breakfast. Like it's nuthin'. This is where at least several well-read individuals reside. This is where it happens. If you want to speak on the plausibility of multiverse theory and buy a high-quality pencil pouch while you do it, you might find this place suits you just fine. But if your idea of scholastic pursuit isn't up to our standards, well. I suggest you take your business elsewhere. As for me, I've got a pretty good setup here. I can't complain. I'm a man of middling health and proportions, a stalwart guardian of geometry and all it pertains to. Day in and day out I pace to and fro, thinking fondly of dodecahedrons as I twist my coffee-stained moustache. I impart sage-like wisdom unto any who will appreciate my mathematical prowess. These guys, they're my guys. They look up to me, they respect me. They call me Mr. Fibonacci, and I didn't have to tell them to. They support me, as well as my musical endeavors. Did I mention I'm in a band? Bet you never thought a dumpy old math professor could be in a band, and I'm cooler than any of 'em. I play drums in a post-noise, post-experimental, post-prog, post-post doom metal band called Human Isosceles. You've probably never heard of us. We're a quintet of angry dexterous men who happen to embrace a shared passion for digits, and there's nothing strange about that. We've got a self-titled EP out, and it's doing really well in certain circles. I hear we're real big in Borneo. And Mediterranean housewives over 41, they can definitely get into Human Isosceles. We're great at birthday parties, too. And retirement homes, and the backrooms of laundromats. People line up around the block to hear us play, they drive in from across the country if they have to. Because there's only one town we'll ever play: our town, the town of scientific breakthroughs and genius intellect and cutting-edge technology. The only town on Earth where a man can do as he pleases without judgment, without fear and without consequences...just as long as he comes from an Ivy League school where he maintained a perfect grade point average and received between three and seven Masters degrees. Only then can he thrive in this town, our city. Gadget City.

About that time again. Wracked with guilt, and with the smell of venison deep in my nostrils, I departed in what I assumed to be the right direction, which, if you must know, was left. My goal was clear only in its simplicity: for reasons you could never understand, I required the means to free myself of sunflower seeds forever. My personal feelings toward these seeds, the intensity of which I cannot overstate, had cost me everything. They had robbed me of my family and my friends. And my hearing, if you can believe that. I hate sunflower seeds so much that I'm reduced to helpless tears at the mere thought of them. Angry tears. I see them and my hands curl into fists. I can't account for what happens next. I just start swinging. You must trust me when I say I've done everything in my power to ensure it wouldn't come to this. I'm not a bad person, I'm really not. I'm just a man who's been left with no choice, and nothing more. So now this is the only option I've got, the only way I can finally take back control of my ruined life. I'm gonna march straight into the supermarket, walk right up to aisle 10, and throw all their sunflower seeds in the trash.

I am the vegan to surpass all vegans. I'm a Super Vegan. I'm gonna put them all to shame, because none of them care about animals as much as I do. Me, I care, more than YOU. Me. I refuse to eat anything that at any point existed within a 45-mile radius of a living thing. It's wrong. I think a lot of things are wrong. Most things, actually. I don't drink cow milk, and I won't allow my friends to either. I demand they raid human milk from local hospitals or the homes of unsuspecting mothers. I only associate with milk thieves and those who engage in other acts of vegan debauchery. My friends and I all work at a natural birthing center, we don't use unnecessary or unnatural things like epidurals. Just regular, painful birth. In fact, we strive to make it as painful as possible, and provide our clients with a harsh and inhospitable environment. The women are forced to lie on a pile of damp leaves while our orderlies release flies and other insects into the room to create that earthy feel. Just as nature intended! But I digress. You wanna know the secret to my success as a vegan? You really want to know? It's a little weird, but I'll let you in on it, just between us vegans. We gotta stick together, right? So the first thing you're gonna need to do is fuck some chickens. Like, anywhere between a couple and a few chickens. Just one won't do. This is to strengthen up your body and get you used to coming into contact with our feathered friends. Make sure you don't penetrate them too forcefully, though. No need to traumatize them any more than what's required. So once you've been intimate with the birds, the next thing you'll want to do is get an intravenous transfusion of pure chicken blood. Do NOT dilute or contaminate the sample in any way. This step is absolutely paramount, as it enables you to form a psychic link with chickens so that you may truly understand their pain and eternal despair. Only then are you ready to learn the sacred vegan arts passed down by our forebears, the bird men of old. Although archaic by today's standards, their practices will quickly become second nature to you. To begin, you must stop flushing away your solid waste; instead, you will deposit it in an opaque receptable that you're to carry with you at all times. In my case, this is a shoebox (which I affectionately refer to as my shitbox), but anything that blocks sunlight will do just fine. It's important to note that direct exposure to the sun's harmful rays will drain your stool of its power, and that power is the key. Allow me to explain: I'm sure you know that waste is anything our bodies can't use for nutrients and all that. But the thing is, our brains only use like, ten percent of our food. I mean, I'm pretty sure. I read about it in a magazine. A VEGAN magazine. So you see, when we defecate, we're actually getting rid of precious vitamins and minerals, and that's not cool, you know? Now, once you've got yourself a good week's worth of feces, it's time to cultivate it. Bring your scat to an officially certified guru of the elusive Watusi tribe. Tell no one of your destination. Once there, reveal the contents of your box to him, and he will speak seven mystical words that you must remember above all else -- on subsequent visits, you will be the one to utter them. He will then perform the Vegan Sacrament, and it is forbidden to look at or speak to him while he does this. When he's finished, you will obtain about nine or ten vegan beans. Congrautlations! This is the concentrated extract of your shit. You're nearly done! Get an ordinary glass of water and crush a bean into it. Drink the mixture, and then immediately go run for about a half mile. Sending the bean through your digestive system will purify it one last time, bringing you to the final step. Grab a cup and squat down, and your asshole will begin to excrete a kind of — well, it's sort of like a colorless ooze, really. Don't mind the smell, it's perfectly safe. Simply spread the ooze on some toast and eat it dry. Repeat as needed for immortality and social superiority.

The marching band's use of rubber bands was banned. Between the hours of 2 and 5 they could not use them, they were stripped of their rights and acess to elasticity. A.M. or P.M.? We ten, the tree men, will accept your unconditional surrender this weekend. The end. Post-script, twenty-four lines remain, now twenty-three. Maybe a bit lazy, but that's all a matter of perspective. Just ask the salvation army band, or didn't I say they marched? Whatever it is you're looking for, you'll find it there, along with all the onion rings you can eat. I've gone and swept the floor for dust mites, for civil rights, for Mike and Ikes. See the fruits of my labor, I did it all for you. To deserve an outcome as illustrious as this, I really must have become a god at tap dancing. Unless you've got a better explanation, that is. Are you still there? Have at it, then, there isn't much time. But plenty of space, a vacuum, the portable kind, to replace the laugh track of your favorite sitcom. Dirt Devil, a looker, a real handsome son of a bitch. He'll take care of your lint problem and then he'll take care of you. For a flat fee you can get him to suck on your leghair. But that's not really my thing. And I hate onion rings.

Pete Boggs was born of a peat bog, it spawned him in the dead of night. He emerged fully grown, already mature and aware, a marsh man incubated by mist. Completely without purpose nor even the most basic imperative to reproduce, he wandered aimlessly in the dark until he found himself surrounded by pavement and the stooped, hurried forms of agitated businessmen — their eyes locked firmly on their perfectly polished shoes. Had they walked with a more measured pace, they likely would've regarded Boggs with contempt. He was exceptionally tall, but gaunt and hairless, and there was a deformed indentation at his sternum. His gnarled, ghostly white hands were covered with acne, and he gasped with perennial bronchitis. Yet the businessmen, in all their haste and self-interest, paid him no mind. Truly, this was no place for swamp folk. Only when it became clear to him that he'd receive no guidance or sympathy from the sharply-dressed men of the city, Boggs drifted off slowly towards the ocean, failing to recognize the innumerable pairs of furious headlights that streaked past in every direction. Their sources? Cars without drivers, sleek embodiments of kinetic anger that flew by with no particular destination, honking eternally. If they took care to avoid striking him down — which, at their speed, would surely end his life — they didn't show it. But Boggs merely trudged on as the cars slammed into each other with such hateful force that it had to have been deliberate, even if there was no reason for any of it. In a daze, he saw visions of himself standing on a beach at sunrise, encircled by dead jellyfish; thousands of them, mutilated, unmoving except for when jabbed at by vicious, giggling children armed with sticks. Boggs had never seen anything more depressing in his admittedly short life, and it stopped him in his tracks. Knees buckling, he mourned for the imaginary jellyfishes for what felt like an eternity, so caught up in his anguish that he didn't notice how thirsty he'd become. As it gradually occurred to him that he hadn't so much as tasted a single drop of water since he'd left the swamp, he was suddenly accosted on both sides by two burly men with hatchets, each of them dressed in cheap firefighter uniforms — the sort you'd find in the costume section of a party store. Their badges were plastic, but their hatchets were quite real. In his weakened state, Boggs thought only to croak, "Water...water..." But no sound came, save for a choked, stuttered rasp that pained him greatly. It was the first time he'd ever tried to speak, and under the circumstances, the worst time to realize he couldn't. Wordlessly, he was forced to watch as the firemen lifted him up without warning, two limbs each, and began to carry him away. They said nothing, nor made any noise at all as they dutifully marched on, just as Boggs had before them; on and on, eyes looking ahead. Or at least, they would have been, if they'd had eyes — even in the midst of his dehydration, Boggs was dully horrified to find that they had no faces. Instead there was blank flesh, mannequin-like and featureless, that sat eerily on the front of their heads. Boggs wiggled feebly and groaned a bit louder, to no avail. His handlers only tightened their hold on his emaciated wrists and ankles, unable to break their damnable silence. His energy spent, Boggs' appendages went slack. The next thing he knew, he was lying on his side in the middle of a crowded city street — the very same city he'd just departed from, only now the businessmen gave him their full and undivided attention. His head was secured in place by one of the firefighter's mud-crusted boot, and he quietly wished he could scratch his nose one last time as he stared down the nozzle of a firehose. Then the switch was thrown, and water forced itself into every pore of his body. Boggs involuntarily convulsed all at once, and the boot on his forehead clamped down harder. In a matter of seconds, his lungs were filled. People in the apartments nearby stuck their heads out of windows to get a better look — everyone wanted to see the drowned man. All the businessman hooped and hollered. Someone sold peanuts. The revelers' mirth quickly spread throughout the rest of the city, until each and every person's spirits were lifted. Maybe they thought it strange that the cause of their celebration was the public execution of someone they'd never met, but maybe not. In the end, it didn't really matter. It had been so long since they'd felt anything at all. For the first time in what may have been a thousand years or more, there was laughter — real laughter, the kind that makes your sides burn and leaves you in tears, unable to quit in spite of how stupid you sound. And there lay Pete Boggs, born of a peat bog, his corpse grotesquely bloated from the water inside it, his lips blue and agape. It was far from a graceful death, but no one dared to disturb his body; instead, it was decided that it and the ground it rested on would become treasured landmarks, monuments to remember the one who'd made them all happy again.

On the curb like a dumb lovesick shaved poodle and I'm not having any fun at all. I'm a transparent grandparent, and my father was a trans parent, and he raised an ungrateful Ziploc bag of flour. Well I'm a twenty-one-year old man with the physique of an eleven-year old girl, and the emotional intelligence of a wooden three-legged chair. They call me Chip cause I've got a chip on my shoulder. I'm a tick off the old clock. People look at me funny on account of my vacant stare, I'd like to take you down to Texas, I'll propose to you there. But I'm not talking about marriage, so don't get your organs in a twist. I've remembered how to cry recently, and I didn't miss it for a second. No release to speak of, no glass of orange juice in the morning to remind me that things can go bad at any time. Cause they won't. Optimism tastes weird. For many years, I felt compelled to dangle from rooftop balconies and ceiling fans where the sharks couldn't get me, fighting the urge to let go and see if I could hear a cartoon splat sound when I hit the ground. Hit the deck, a cassette deck for first place. But the sharks weren't ever interested, and I think they're still not. I made a fresh plate of shark fins, get 'em while they're — cold.

I've got a little over two decades now, and 80 pouches of low-calorie fruit snacks I won't share with anyone. I've got an axe to grind, a bone to pick, some beef to squash, again and again. It's disarming to know that none of it ever made a dent. All I want for my birthday is for the flies to lay their eggs in my roommates' beds, a grand investment until Christmas when there'll be hundreds of them. Save some money away for the incoming relief fund. Tell your friends. It's quite a view I've got — a drop that'd probably break my bones, people pretending it's nice outside, a summer that never ends. Lines I forgot to use, like petroleum jelly and confetti, gathering dust in some forlorn corner of a room I never thought I'd be so happy to leave. You can see right through me, and I regret to inform you that idiosyncrasies a man does not make. They can get you pretty close, though. Enough that sometimes I think I'm worthy of what I have now, a rabbit well-versed in occasional therapy, smarter than you or me or the aborted offspring of Andy Kaufman and Jesus; and twice as kind, without trying and without incentive. But that's a fleeting high, a fever dream, a result I never earned, good television, a kitchen floor free of slime or stink. Stay for dinner and stay your execution. Looking forward to it.

The world looked very different from the seat of his tandem bicycle, even if -- or maybe because -- he rode it alone. Leisure time was very important to him, a quiet man of about 39, and on most days he chose to spend it cycling through his sleepy little neighborhood, whose sidewalks, while pleasant to look at, were never anything but devoid of life. Now and then a car would pass by with hardly a sound, and the man made a calculated risk each time. Carefully, he'd take his non-dominant hand away from the brakes and give a small wave to the stone-faced driver, before quickly returning it to its orignal position lest he injure himself. No one ever waved back. For a time, the man was convinced that it must have been because he wasn't seen. The first thing he did was to go out and purchase a tandem bike (his current model) in the hope that it would boast a more commanding visual presence. Apparently it did not. Not one to be defeated so easily, the man tried waving more and more aggressively, until the day he suffered a terrible fall and badly broke both of his legs. And then he tried no longer. How bitter he became then, as he slowly recovered in his darkened house by himself. There was no mistaking it: his neighbors, in their wretched convertibles and SUVs, had seen him from the beginning. They chose not to wave back. Trapped and alone with his hideousness, the man surrendered to his base desires. He lived on paint chips and bathwater, he drank the blood of rats. He had no repreive from his madness, no comfort in the world...until he noticed her. His next-door neighbor, a widow whom life had not been kind to. The type of woman to possess a unique constitution he could identfy with and appreciate. Someone, no, the only one that could take pity on his soul. She was a few years older than him, and would've been classically beautiful had things only turned out differently. She wore long floral-pattern dresses and painted what was left of her shattered nails canary yellow, and she'd plucked out all of her eyelashes. At eight past seven on Thursday nights, she'd strap on roller skates and drift around the first floor of her empty house, screaming in a tortured hellish rage directed at no one. The man watched her day and night, utterly transfixed by the things he saw. As he slowly regained use of his legs, he resolved to introduce himself as soon as he was able to. Just as soon, yes sir..but how? Like himself, the widow was a recluse, a miserable, broken person. She never set foot outside, and it seemed she wouldn't open the door for anyone but the mailman. And then it hit him like a jolt: the mailman. He would impersonate the mailman in order to speak with her, and thereby confess his feelings. And then she would probably fellate him on the spot, and he'd joyously set fire to his bicycle and begin a new life with her. It was so simple that he slapped himself with a wet pool noodle for not thinking of it sooner. Then he watched her crazed antics with a newfound excitement, reassured by the knowledge that he would join her before long. The very thought drove him wild with desire, to the point where he decided to knock himself out with tranquilizers rather than face his impure urges, his fuck force. But that night, as well as the next three or four after it, his passion turned against him as he slept. His dreams were plagued by scenes of the mailman having his way with the poor widow inside of his decrepit mailtruck, ravaging her body, corrupting her with his malfeasance. Emerging from this nightmare yet again with tears in his eyes, the man had reached his limit. No more. With some strained effort, he dragged himself downstairs and opened the front door, unable to recall the last time he'd done even that much. This was the time. Once outside, he knew he couldn't falter. One after another, he pulled his useless legs over the threshold, down his porch, and across the front lawn to her house. The exertion relieved him of his bowels, giving him one last burst of strength. Desperate for air, the man staggered upright, clutching the railing of the widow's porch. It was then that he saw the two of them. The widow stood in her doorway, her slender arms at her sides, her roller-skates already on despite it being a few minutes early. She was lightly chatting with the mailman — or at least, A mailman — whose truck was nowhere to be found. A bicycle was burning a few feet away, the scent of which caused the man's legs to give out once more. His mouth tasted of iron, and though he tried his hardest to make out what the two people were saying, he couldn't hear them over the ringing in his ears. And then, with a grace that came as no surprise to him, the widow sank to her knees, freed the mailman of his trousers, and began to fellate him lovingly. The mailman turned and faced the cripple for a moment, who, in between choked sobs, waved his right hand feebly before losing control of his fine motor skills. But the mailman made no such gesture. Silently, he led the widow into the house and shut the door behind them.

Feel better now? Yeah, I think so. About as good as a radio in the bathtub. No soap. Pay attention. Get your socks on, get your rocks off. Rhyme a thousand times, it won't change a thing. I vote that you vote, okay? I'm the big kahuna of words, and let me tell you, there's no trophy. Not even a ribbon. Maybe a big black one, ribbed for her pleasure, to be delivered at your doorstep first thing in the morning. Bells and whistles, no anonymity. How about a fragile sense of urgency? How about you take me out back and put one right between my eyes? I'd rather shoot my y's instead, I never capitalize them anyway. Scratch 'em out the best you can while you try to figure out where it all went wrong. If you need a slice of life then slice your wife but don't expect her to lend you a hand. What did I just say? Forget about it. You know I used to be afraid of guys with lanyards, but if I wanted to beat someone over the head with a clipboard, I knew where to go. The rats above the tile. I'm on first-name basis with a couple of them. Anyone named Tyler or Derek is going down, I'll tell you that much. Not in my community. I think I'll grow a vegetable garden. Throw my comatose uncle Stu in there, too. Real nice guy, I think you'd like him.

Dog's day out, Tanner's day on the street, I'm in a bad mood and I'm walkin'. Gettin' real tired of these drivers shinin' beams into my eyes — beaming lights, thoughts, signals into my angry dog brain, makin' me do things I don't wanna do. I've got a good sense of vitreous humor, and I see floaters on the sidewalk, and on the walls of every last school I've attended. I see 'em flash across the backs of the cars I chase, the ones I bark at until I'm hoarse. Don't blink and drive. They say some real nasty things about me from the safety of their steering wheels, and I hear it all. They call me a malnourished mutt, they call me a punk-ass pooch. They don't call me anything I wouldn't call myself, but that don't make 'em right. You may not have heard of Tanner the dog man, but I know you. I know your stink, I'd recognize it anywhere. I know you jolt awake in the middle of the night, wipin' the crust outta your eyes and cursin' the dogs outside your window, makin' all that racket. You shake your fist and shout until you're blue in the face, but you fail to realize there's only ever one dog out there, and that's me. I howl and I knock your trash cans over, I roll around in your garbage and I bark. I bark so you won't sleep anymore. I bark because you don't listen. I bark until the sun comes up, and then I slink home to nurse my broken voice. Home is my apartment, it's drab and dark, I don't ever bring any guests around. There's no fridge or TV, I don't know how to use those. They're even worse than the cars, full of confusing sounds and images, people trapped inside. What do they want from me? There are cars on TV that I can't chase — what's the point? So I curl up on my newspaper and dream of ruining your furniture, shitting in your car, tearing up your prized leather interior. It's what you deserve. You don't know what it's like to stay here in the cut, up on the fourth floor of this hellhole. The fourth floor is where the drain weasels live, they sneak into my bathroom and clog the drains with hair. Human hair. YOUR hair. I've gotta get in there and yank it out, I pretend it's your entrails. Helps me cope with the stench. Then I throw chunks of it at your neighbors when they're not lookn', and write them threatening messages on their windows, I sign 'em with your name. Now they think you want to carve up their kids and stick the severed heads on your picket fence. Ruh-roh. Every dog has his day, and this one is mine. Don't drop the soap ya jackoff.

I've got a friend named Rhonda, I've known her for years, we grew up together in a small town of relative comfort and security. She was mild-mannered and plain, and maybe even a little phlegmatic if we're being completely honest here. She never said much, because she was usually too busy shrieking at some poor fool or another, over what, I never really knew. There was no telling with Rhonda; see, she had a pretty weird concept of justice, particularly when it came to serving it. She was always shouting that, if it was up to her, the bad guys would pay — for everything. And I guess, somewhere along the line, she decided it WAS up to her. I don't know, maybe she'd seen too many action movies or something. She was gonna punish the guilty so that pure, hardworking women like herself could finally feel safe in this world. Not necessarily BE safe, you understand, but feel safe. For Rhonda, this distinction was unimportant, and she'd probably rip my fingernails off for pointing it out to you. But anyway, the thing was, we didn't have a whole lot of crime in our little town, and the police made short work of the odd troublemaker or two you'd see from time to time. So Rhonda vowed to expose the true natures of all those sneaky bastards the cops were too blind to see, the ones no one could see but her. She knew they were out there — lying in wait, plotting to hurt her, steal from her, rob her of her dignity. They didn't think she knew, but she knew. She wasn't fooled for a second. She was going to take them down, for the sake of all that was stuffy dumpy and shrill. Her method in doing so turned out to be a simple one; in fact, she'd been doing it since she was young — it was her favorite way to pass time. Rhonda liked to deliberately leave her bag in the middle of the park and wait nearby, so as to apprehend purse thieves. She'd hide in the bushes for as long as it took to spring her trap, and then leap out with surprising athletic ability before screeching, "Yo, fuck-face!" or something to that effect, which always struck me as kind of a weird thing to yell. Then she'd run them down and, on the incredibly rare occasions she was able to actually catch anyone, mace them with such persistence and outright brutality that it was frankly appalling. Just awful. She'd hold the can a centimeter from their face and empty the whole thing into their eyes and mouth. Sometimes she'd pretend to stop so they could have a minute to spew burning, agonizing vomit from the core of their very being, but then she'd jam the nozzle in whatever orifice seemed to be leaking the least mucus, and go wild. I once asked her why, and she explained that she didn't want to exclude any opening by leaving it out. Fair's fair, right? Well, once the mace ran out and she'd decided the motionless (and now quite unrecognizable) heap in front of her had learned its lesson, Rhonda would give a little nod to herself and head home, where she'd have the kind of sound sleep that we could never have, thanks to a profound sense of accomplishment we could only dream of. You almost had to admire her dedication, even in spite of how sick it was. And who knows, maybe one or two of her victims really were purse snatchers, genuine criminals that she had effectively removed from society. I mean, in all her years of doing this, surely there had to be a couple. I'd like very much to believe that. But mostly they were just hopelessly unlucky people whose only collective crime was accidentally wandering within a ten-foot radius of a derelict handbag, which they probably didn't even see in the first place. And for that offense they were indiscriminately called fuck-faces and attacked by a pepper-spray wielding maniac, who never gave so much as a passing thought to the likelihood of their innocence. One of these ill-fated individuals was actually the man who would later become Rhonda's husband. I think his name was Chet, or Chad, or something like that. I don't know. I don't care to know. Because Chester, well, he was just about the skinniest, wimpiest, most fragile little fleck of fecal matter you ever saw in your life. And it wasn't one of those situations where he had a winning personality to make up for it, either — this guy Clyde, he sucked. He sucked bad. He had no skills, no opinions or ideas of his own, nothing redeemable whatsoever. He was useless — I wouldn't trust him to lick the shit off my shoes, which he would. Carl was the type of guy that let women in high heels step on his penis. In fact, he paid them to, along with a whole bunch of other stuff you'd really rather not know about. To call Cooper a masochist was being generous; he was basically just out of his mind. When he was too broke to get people to stick lit cigarettes in his asshole, he'd have to get creative with his punishment. In a pinch, he was fond of calling the cops on himself using a pay phone, by anonymously tipping them off about a streaker fondling children in the grocery store. Then he'd lather himself in vegetable oil so he'd be harder to grab, and he'd wait, stark naked, for the police to chase him around. It made him feel important. They'd catch him in a matter of minutes, but Clifford was such a pathetic sight that they never had the heart to book him. Apart from which, they figured he'd get off on it anyway. So they'd let him go, after imploring him to seriously consider getting some help. But Conrad would just shake his head, offer a sheepish "thanks", and go on his way. For years he kept this up. Now, you can imagine that when Clinton heard about Rhonda and her activities in the park, he was beside himself with excitement. Here was a woman who would blast him with pepper spray for seemingly no reason, and without any provocation at all. He had to meet her, and set out at once. When he got there, he only had to linger for a moment before something unprecedented happened. Crispus was standing well away from Rhonda's purse — much too far for even her to conclude he was trying to steal it — but she leapt out at him all the same, and for the first time, it wasn't for her justice. It was because Cassidy was without a doubt the sorriest excuse for a human being she'd ever laid eyes on, and something primal and infectious had taken hold at the very sight of him. She felt obligated, compelled, to snuff out his existence, purely on impulse and at the risk of having to look at him for one second longer. It only took her three to cross the park to him, and another to take him down and get to work with the mace. But halfway through, she realized he wasn't struggling, and stopped to check if he'd expired. He was so weak-willed that it wouldn't exactly have been surprising, yet it was possible she'd simply proceeded with too much gusto this time. When she leaned in for a proper look, however, she could see his hand twitching slightly, fumbling in the grass for something. For an instant, Rhonda thought it could be a weapon — perhaps some mace of his own — but she was confused to find a plucked, pepper-stained petunia petal, which lay meek and withered in his child-sized palm. Cletus offered it in what he hoped was her general direction, and then, barely audible, two words dribbled out of his stinking, quivering lips: "Marry me." There was a long silence then, as Rhonda swiveled wildly between vague bemusement and bubbling nausea, consideration and disgust at what was surely the strangest situation she'd ever been in. Her mind was a blur of conflicting thoughts, none of them pleasant. But then, as she stared down at Cornelius's puffy, dripping face, she gradually began to see him for what he really was...a dishrag, a doormat, a cuck. An avenue through which she could vent out her frustrations, someone she could abuse, someone that could take the pain away who would never fight back, never complain, never leave her. And it would all be what Cabaret wanted: paper cuts on his scrotum, constant verbal assault and beratement that trod all over his feelings and sense of self-worth, tore him down from the instant he woke up in the morning to when he finally slithered back into bed at night. They had waited their entire lives for one another, and it had brought them to that park. Who's to say there was no chance, no possibility at all that one day, at some point in the distant future, maybe they might have even come to love each other? I don't think I have any right to claim otherwise, and I'd wager no one else does, either. Rhonda accepted Chrysanthemum's awkward proposal that day, and from what I hear, they're living together somewhere out in Wisconsin, where they remain a local curiosity. They're happy, but they don't talk a whole lot, mainly because Rhonda glued Colitis' mouth shut ages ago, and he wouldn't want it any other way.

Abandon a bagel -- I was never a big fan -- and a brooding, bleached-blond bimbo, a real bang-up job for a brand loyalist like me. Her name was easy to remember and didn't start with a B, which were (and are) my only criteria for an ideal mate. I'm looking for someone who can look for someone for me. I'm not really a "yard work" kind of guy. I'm not really a "chew my own food and swallow" kind of guy, you know what I mean? I'm a lobbyist, I lobby for hotel lobbies, the really expensive ones. I can talk my way out of anything, and people say that makes me a jerk. But I'm a man of modest means. I drink my own piss. I don't have a mattress, I just sleep on stacks of those orange vanilla wafers. Store-brand. I wear a functioning three-piece suit made of flattened boxes of Frosted Flakes, and the sounds of scuttling insects keep me awake at night. So does my sleep apnea and kidney stones, that makes thirteen of them this year. I'm actually a mess, really, I'm probably not long for this world. But I'm short on cab fare, my hair's thinning, and my smile's nine miles wide.