DO YOU DARE ENTER THE OCTAGON OF TRUTH? SPIN CYCLE! THE HARDEST HITTING, REALEST POLITICAL SHOW ON NEWTRUTH TV
AUGUST 14, 2022
Welcome back to the Spin Cycle here on NewTruth TV, I’m Mali Rengarden filling in for Joy-Elle Reeves, here as always with Chuck Wilshire. For this segment, we have something a little different, a little more fun! Usually you would hear from some boring, old, white political commentator, like this guy right here. She rubbed Chuck’s shoulder and he laughed.
But not today. Today we have a very special guest, a Youtuber extraordinaire and the youngest Biden delegate, as far as we can tell, the youngest delegate in American history. Certainly an impressive young man with a lot to say, someone whose name I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot going forward. Stevie T, welcome to the Spin Cycle!
Sup. Stevie, it’s great to have you, thank you for coming. Yep. So can you explain what your role is as a Biden delegate? I know people hear that term a lot, but I don’t think they always know what it means.
Yeah, I’m supposed to go on dumb shows like this one and talk about how he’s the most effective president of my lifetime. Pretty ridiculous, don’t you think? I can’t even vote yet. Who honestly cares what I think? The Biden admin doesn’t care, they’re just playing the game. They’d have someone born January 2021 do this if the data said they should. The most effective president of this baby’s life. Infant Biden delegate is amazed by the progress Biden has made. They’d train the baby to say Biden, so it’s his first word or something. Be like, wow, Biden is such a good president even babies can tell! Kid is saying Biden instead of mama. They’d pair the word Trump with electric shocks so the baby cries every time it hears Trump’s name. Like, see? He’s so evil, even babies hate him.
Well I gotta tell you, this is some of the most bizarre stuff we’ve ever heard here on the Spin Cycle. Chuck? I don’t know what to say. It’s good television, but it’s bad politics. Really bad politics. Have some respect the for the big guy.
The big guy? Stevie eyed him curiously. Chuck’s a sleeper agent?
Stevie, ummmm, oh dear. You know you’re here on behalf of Joe Biden, right? He’s been slumping in the polls, now’s really not the time to do this. The midterms will be here before you know it.
Oh, I know. It’s never the time. I’ve been the youngest delegate for ten percent of my life. I was promoting his agenda before I even knew I was. And the whole time, it’s never been the right time to do anything but say exactly what they want me to say. You know my MCN is run by the Center For American Progress? That’s insane, Stevie said. You heard it here first. There’s not a single politics show in the whole network, but it’s them running it.
Stevie, I really don’t think that’s true. The Center for American Progress isn’t involved in entertainment like that. I would know, I did an internship for them after I graduated from Yale. They’re strictly focused on policy.
Yeah. I’m sure that’s what they’d say, if you asked them. But they’re lying. I’ve been shilling for them without even knowing it for a whole year. Been knowingly shilling for a few months now. Videos are a pack of hot dog BUNS. I’m the Mongolian Candidate, Chet. Going Dudley the programmed way kid.
Mali coughed, shuffled her papers. Stevie, I had a dozen questions for you, but now I’m thinking I won’t be needing those. I should just let you cook, isn’t that what you kids say?
Yeah I’ll cook, lemme cook. Cooking like Chef Curry, kid. Chet, I’m getting Tedophiled kid. Straight Tedophiled. My MCN is a DUMP. You know they wanted me to tweet ‘Neera Tanden is mommy’ the other day? Can you believe that, Mali? They were laying it on thick too, like, breach of contract Stevie, watch it. Bargaining with me like, OK, OK, Stevie, we tweet ‘Neera Tanden is’, and then you just quote tweet it and add ‘mommy’. I was like, I don’t even know who that is. Like, is this even climate related? I looked her up and she’s like a staffer or something. Was a favor for her daughter I guess. We’ve really come a long way since they promised me creative control. The other shoe has dropped. Mommy Tedophile, kid. Was Mommy Neera behind the Raytheon Fortnite promotion I had to do? I got some real friggin questions, Tito. Some real friggin questions. Don’t look at me like that Chuck, I don’t care. The whole thing is so fake. I was never fighting for anything. There’s no heroes left, the system just eats everything. Eats it up and shits it out. I don’t feel bad at all. I hope the fifteen year old twink the Republicans have doing this goes dudley too.
Let’s talk more about that, what else can you say about the Republicans and the rise of fascism under Trump? Here at the Spin Cycle, we stick to the facts, but that’s not always true of our competitors. Or our guests.
Whatever. Where’s Brian Stelter, I heard he works here now. I wanna kick him the balls for my last time on TV. So-called TV. What number channel is this Mali? No, I’m really asking you. What number channel is this? Depends on the market, Mali said.
Sure, sure, Stevie said. What a great opportunity it is to be here, for the five people watching right now. I’ve really made it to the top. I’m just so glad I became the youngest delegate in history, I really made the right play there. Just waving the flag for the legend Joey B for a basketball lineups worth of people right now. Five poor souls infected with the Democrat cordyceps fungus. Fucking sad.
Hey, Stevie said, to everybody listening right now, I’m sorry to tell you, I can’t do it anymore. Can’t wave the flag for Joey B, can’t do it. Mister credit card industry himself. Guy fuckin blows, kid. Hey, whats Stelter’s new show on here called? Manufactured Truth? Why don’t you call it that, I’ll give that to you for free. That’s honestly pretty good. Mel used to watch Reliable Sources, I couldn’t believe it. I love you, Mel. I don’t care that you thought I smoked Ellen. I didn’t but it’s okay. Thank you for everything, from the bottom of my heart. You gave me a second home. I lost a home in California and gained two in Jersey. I didn’t know how lucky I was.
Kid – Chuck, let me finish. I’m almost done here. I got late breaking news from a reliable source. He pointed at himself. Me. Listen up, this is a bombshell, exclusive to NewTruth TV, the best politics show on interdimensional cable. This just in, I will kick Brian Stelter in the balls so fucking hard dude. This rat fuck thought I actually masterminded the Ellen thing. Well he didn’t actually think that, I bet. He’s just ridin deepstate DICK, kiddd. Tito, you know I love you, you’re like a second father to me. You kick Brodeur in the balls and I’ll kick Stelter. Might reset something that went wrong in this crazy world.
This is just unhinged. Please don’t swear, I mean honestly. The lack of decorum is stunning. You are inciting violence. Are you feeling OK? We should check if he’s got a high fever. I’m sorry to everyone watching. Chuck, I mean, I don’t know? This is just wrong.
It is. Kid, you’re digging your own grave here. Hopefully, Stevie said.
Stevie, when they told me you refused to remove your hat, I said, really? He won’t remove his hat for a television segment? They said, he was almost crying, it might even be stapled to his head. There’s pieces of metal around the crown, I think they’re staples. I said, this should be interesting. But, I gotta tell you, this has been beyond even my wildest dreams. I’m glad I could do that for you, Mali. Thanks for having me.
They escorted him out, from the thirtyfourth floor to the street in ninety seconds. He was sure the cameras had switched off long before he finished talking. He stood on the sidewalk, dazed. There was so much wrong with him, he didn’t know what to do. It was all misaligned, it was all wrong. His bones were mismatched, his tendons were like hands without thumbs. It was all barely held together, he could collapse into parts so easily. It would only take the flick of a finger at exactly the right pressure point. A tiny point in space, taking up all its mass. The sun was just like that in the sky. Always there, everything oriented towards it. You could wear a hat or sit under a tree but it didn’t matter.
He found a park and walked into its center. There was a playground, a rock garden, and a few benches. He could hear children laughing, children crying, parents soothing and admonishing. Deep emotion was radiating through every inner space, carried in the blood that sloshed through the miles of twisted veins. It happened here and everywhere else, continuously. The totality of human experience is zettabytes and zettabytes of data produced at every instant and only a fraction gets preserved, and that fraction is whittled down to gray nothing by the force of time. Your progeny could seed the earth for a hundred million years and then half a billion years later they would find your endling descendant’s hipbone and a tooth and guess what his life was like. You wouldn’t even occur to them, and they could never, ever touch what it felt like to be alive as a brain in your body.
He sank into a bench, listened to the trees sighing. The birds were still singing and fighting over branches and they always would be, hopefully. He looked at the rocks in their landscaped formations. They were moved by glaciers every eon, moved by humans every decade. Their memories would be more interesting than a human’s, if they could tune into the right field. But they couldn’t, and that was just as well for them.
He wanted to know what happened when you died. Surely things must be lost in translation as they changed from one form to another, but it would be a shame if all the inner worlds, if the trillions of thoughts accumulated in the billions of wells were gone forever too, rendered inert and disappeared. Consciousness was a field, he was sure of it. You picked it up, like the birds picked up the sound of the mountains as they flew above them. But could you still feel this field, be a part of it when your earthly antennas were retired?
He closed his eyes and just listened. The trees breathing, giving him breath, the rocks counting time on geologic scales, humming songs only the ants could hear. The weight of the unseen earth, squirming and writhing to its liquid core. Things built on top of things built on top of things, rocks accreted in space and squishy feeling built on the rock. The deep emotion of the children was ceaselessly welling up, they chattered like the birds did. Everything was a big deal, the world was soaked with newness. They found the novelty in every piece of mulch, every humming rock, every blade of grass. Spirits happy to be passed back into a form maybe. Started back at zero and corrupted again, but at least started over.
Things swam in him and he sank deeper into the bench, feeling more like a conduit than Stevie for a second. A world existed outside of him. Whether it looked pretty much like his, or nothing at all, he couldn’t say.
He kept his eyes closed. The sun. The suns. A tiny dot in the sky, hundreds of millions of miles away, a tiny dot on his body being eaten away. The twin suns of his life. He rippled and the world palpitated in his inner redblack space, horribly gyrating and changing form in the dark. He gripped the bench’s armrest till the disorientation faded and opened his eyes slowly, half expecting something new and half knowing it would be the same. He squinted through the endless light and the world came back in slowly. When he looked at his hands, they had bits of black on them that he’d squeezed out of the iron. People were still walking through, kids were still playing. No one paid attention to him but it felt like they did. He thought maybe they were staring at him, but not at the right angle.
He dragged himself back to the boulevard. The cars sounded like a spedup wave, quickly eroding a beach. He walked on the sidewalk and looked at his shoes. This way of walking gave you scoliosis, but it took a while to kick in. They could talk about it at his autopsy. One examiner would say to the other, jeez, this kid really had the early warning signs of scoliosis. A few more years and he would’ve had a really advanced case. Spine woulda turned into a snake.
That’s not all, the other would say. His brain is completely smooth and someone etched the word BALD into it with a tattoo gun. Very sad, they vandalized his skull after he died. No, I don’t think so. I saw no damage to the skull prior to incision. His brain just did that. At least he’s honest? His vertex is fucked. I know I shouldn’t talk that way at work, I’m sorry. But look at that posterior cranial shot. Decimated.
Stevie kept looking at the top of his shoes. That’s the important angle, he’d always thought that. Other people see it from the side, but it’s really about giving yourself confidence. If it looks good from your own perspective, that’s the most important thing. The irony of this line of thinking occurred to him, but it didn’t sway him in the slightest.
He walked for five, ten, twenty blocks, his head craned down the whole time. All at once it was too much, so suddenly he almost collapsed. He was the opposite of a plant, just the opposite. Nothing organic in him left, only the hard plastic shell he’d been formed into remained. He ran into the lobby of a plush hotel. The world had ended, he knew it but they didn’t know it yet. They’d know soon but there was no way to convince them of this now, they had to understand it for themselves. He talked himself so far out of sync that he had to pay extra for a room and sneak around the back, through the loading dock. Going out in the sun again almost killed him.
The ceiling of his new world was much better, a flat white compromised by water stains in a few places. He laid on the bed and painted it clean. The phone buzzed, buzzed again. He read the messages on Snap as they came in.
I tried, Stevie. I tried. You did great making it as far as you did. I’m sorry the delegate thing didn’t work out. I’m sorry for many things, life is not fair and it certainly showed you that. It’s all done now. They’ll bury the footage, don’t worry. You always worry too much. You are so young Stevie, you have your life still. You won’t be back here, but there’s so many places you could go. I wish you all the best Stevie. Take care of yourself.
The phone fell to the bed. He closed his eyes and died, opened his eyes and lived again as a slightly degraded copy. He was a pale image of the breathing world, a shadow so easily killed by the sun. He grabbed the phone and threw it against the wall and it laid facedown on the carpet. He felt sad for it. It wasn’t the phone’s fault. It wasn’t a horrible thing, it just channeled the horrible things he’d sought out. Found more of them, like a good dog. But that was a function of himself, not the phone, the phone just facilitated. Kiddddd. Chet was right, when he spoke Stevie’s thoughts. Kid, that retarded Hellraiser Cube has the kid going DUDLEY. But you couldn’t blame the cube, right?
He didn’t know where he was going. Each time he pulled some truth out of the beyond and put it into a sentence, the words decayed into a gross meaninglessness. He grabbed two pillows and put them over each ear, sinking into the lack of sensation. Just the white of the ceiling and the sound of no sound. He was back in the park but it was more psychiatric. The curve of the earth painted white with liver spots. Nature was far away, nothing about him was natural. A billion years of evolution to feel like a shopping cart full of loose parts. Lamarck was right, not Darwin. He wished himself into an abomination and it came true. He rubbed his head against the pillows, listened to the noise it made. He whispered to himself. It was over now, it really was. He’d imagined an end like Jack Nicholson, delirious at a Laker game with a ballerina. But he didn’t deserve that ending, he deserved a TeenMagazine.com ending. It wasn’t the best TeenMagazine.com ending, like being crushed by a tank performing for ROTC cadets, or falling out of a Five Hour Energy hot air balloon into busy traffic, but it was his ending all the same.
He tried to go somewhere else, anywhere else. He tried to find something good to plunge into. His therapist had suggested building a memory palace, the few times he’d gone. He could decorate it any way he wanted, landscape it any way he wanted, he could paint the walls inside, he could put any thing, place, or idea he liked inside its infinite corridors. Anything he hated, he could put in one of the closets or in the unfinished part of the basement. He didn’t have to destroy anything, and in fact he shouldn’t. She said it was very important not to destroy things, because you want to be able to live mindfully, not having to avoid landmines left and right. You couldn’t disable every landmine, you have to learn to walk on them without blowing yourself up. You have to be able to keep them in the palace without it feeling haunted.
He made a room for his art, and he felt comfortable calling it that. It’d been really good before he’d decided to sabotage it. He’d put hundreds of hours into his best videos. He put each one on its own DVD, made art for the DVD, and made a bookshelf to house all of them. He made the most comfortable chair on earth for his grandma, and he created an extremely handsome robot chef, whose physical features were modeled after her favorite soap opera star. He made a den for his grandpa, set down a step in the house, and he made a magic remote for the den, specially linked to his grandpa by fingerprints. You could set the den’s status to do not disturb with this remote, and a red light would turn on at the entrance. If anyone except Mary attempted to enter the den while do not disturb was on, they would be electrocuted.
He thought of his best self and he made a copy of it, and he told that copy to download all of his memories onto a hard drive. The copy was in charge of sorting through his memories and curating the best ones. He unplugged the right sectors of the copy’s brain so it could do this without feeling bad.
He made a replica of Tito’s back room, exactly as it was in early 2012. He mentally imagined the joy Tito felt then, and he imbued the room with that feeling. It was part of the wallpaper, part of the couch, part of the massive television. When you walked in, you naturally felt happy.
He made Chet a set of everlasting pens distilled from the best ranked sativas of all time. Each one had a certificate of analysis from the CEO of the Cannabis Cup certifying them as sativa. The pens were made in an American factory, and the workers were unionized and drugtested specifically for indica.
He didn’t know what to do for Timmy. Stevie thought he knew him well, maybe he didn’t. There was a distance there, and in his self-obsession he’d never tried to close it. What would he like in the memory palace? He liked trolling, was good at it, brought it to an art, but it wasn’t his purpose. It was a fun way to pass the time. It was a hobby, better than playing video games, but not real art. Stevie had always wanted more.
He played this line of thinking back in his head.
It wasn’t the first time he’d done so. With the benefit of hindsight, he realized he’d been wrong in one crucial aspect. Timmy hadn’t let it infect him. It was his pet, not his owner, and that wasn’t true for Stevie.
He couldn’t deny this, once it occurred to him. It was obviously true. He was run by a cordyceps fungus more than by himself. It wasn’t the politics cordyceps fungus, the politics was just a cover for something larger, constantly growing under the surface, in a soil black with nutrients. It slithered up from the ground into the walls of his memory palace, wrapped the bones of it in mycelium. Stevie watched helplessly as hell was created in his own image.
At first it was only noticeable if you were primed to look for it. Most people wouldn’t notice, but Stevie did. Stevie knew. The wallpaper flaked away in spots, in uncannily human spots. He tried to replenish it, push it back to new, but it flaked away again and again, until anyone would know the palace was compromised.
The walls went bare, and then the mycelium opened holes in the drywall. It grew its way over every surface, invisible but robust. He tried to open his eyes but he couldn’t. He tried to delete the palace but he couldn’t. The fungus sealed his eyes shut, it took him from the hotel into a liminal space and then through, further, into the world of the memory palace, never to return to the world he knew, the one where he grew an audience and lost it, where he reached his dreams and then killed them, the one he grew to know better each day while he died more and more, it had something for him here, in this hellinsideheaven space, and it wanted him to watch, just watch, watch, there is no other option right? He could not blink this away, his eyes were permanently closed, and he couldn’t shut this away like he could the sun, there was no blinking for this, he just had to watch. It had horrors for him, it wanted him to see what had grown for so long, down there in the deep black soil. Once he gave up and his flame died the show began. The mycelium laced the whole palace and great mushrooms of black aura grew, massive and invisible. They whispered to him, they licked his face, they sucked his brains out and spit them back into his ears. They sang to the asteroid belt until one screamed out of the sky and punched a hole in the roof. He fixed that but more meteors rained down in a pattern, a familiar pattern. All of space, all of time was aligned against him, slowdancing with black aura. What he’d done to deserve this, he didn’t know. He’d been a shitty person, but not an evil one. It was trying to teach him something, but he didn’t know what.
It rained now, going from a light drizzle to a great, era-defining hurricane in a minute. It battered his palace, ripped the shutters out, smashed the windows and cut the power off. The lights came back in ten seconds, but the many priceless artifacts digital Stevie had curated were destroyed, along with digital Stevie. Real Stevie had forgotten to install a generator.
It rained harder than it ever had on earth and a huge tornado spout sucked a mile of water off the ocean and poured it through the many holes of the roof. The water pushed out of the shattered windows easily enough but the trash of the ocean remained. Thousands of pieces of plastic ephemera crowded the many rooms of his palace, forgotten by the people but remembered by the ocean. Huge bluefin tunas sailed the waves of trash, and they stared at him as pounds of plastic poured out of their mouths. He tried to save them, to imagine huge, two story fishtanks that he could throw some of them in, but they were simply too large, too oceanic to save. They died and the light went out of their huge eyes.
He stuck his head out the window and giant lattices of lightning painted the sky. This was beautiful, so it stopped, and the rain came down slower. People started to wander onto his front lawn, first shambling in the shape of homeless veterans, then crawling in the shape of starving children. Their stomachs were distended from the malnutrition, and they had Superbowl merchandise on, tight against their fake beerbellies. Men in jerseys with bloated faces laughed at this while they drank their Coors Lights, resting under an awning.
Dead children and abused animals got stacked on the front lawn. The animals snarled at each other, forever terrified from the abuse they’d suffered. When you looked past the bared teeth, it was really about the fear in their hearts. He sent out an army of Cesar Millans, and they knew the same thing he did, that it was really about fear at its core. They all got bitten and mauled. He watched a Doberman rip one of their throats out. It did so and then whined, forced by its own malformed impulses to do something it knew was wrong.
Past the lawn, there was a lush, beautiful forest. It started to die as soon as he created it. The leaves fell like snow until the trees were bare. They stood like soldiers in a strange, ancient formation, somehow knowing exactly where to stand. They hugged each other under the ground to stay in place, and even without foliage, a small ecosystem remained. There were nests of birds, squirrel holes, caterpillars inching up the branches, things too small to see but alive all the same.
This was too pleasant to imagine, so it was purged. The trees’ underground fingers were broken, and they let each other go and crashed to the ground. He heard the squirrels and raccoons explode as the trees fell on them. There was nothing too grim to think about now. If he imagined a form, then he naturally imagined its destruction. A drone poured salty poison on the earth till nothing was left but grey dirt.
The only thing left standing was the memory palace. It would’ve been better if it fell, because then he could wipe the slate clean. It had to stand, because things had to be bad.
The clouds disappeared and the blue sky came out for a moment. He sighed and the sky flipped, like it was just a giant sheet of paper. The other side was a mirror, and every surface in the palace turned into a mirror.
YOU
You got an inkling of what was wrong, why it was wrong,
But then it was gone too.
He ran and the walls, the trash, it muuuuutated wile he did. Shivering piles of trash and dead things, radiating bad vibes. SUFFERING in black neon, blackaura, a mouth smiled but wouldn’t eat him, wouldn’t no way. No way way way nothingeasy only a blackzombierainbow of blackaura smiling dead teeth DEAD. Great blackaura a starquake, he was shiver of grass in the sun. Nothing nothing nothing. He ran and ran wile it muuuutated, all bad good things none. Great anacondas of cables full of vapors badvapors in great arrythmias, visible stuff bad hidden stuff badder, a realm too bad to name blackaura of death beneath death lower than death, worse and farther than death, black smile dead teeth laugh, the blackjelly of life slime shivering with blackaura, all congealed through time, something bad, something very bad here in here hidden underneath the underneath. A dark mirror he made, a bad dream realer than his bones
stairs now
every fifty yards
And he took them
As far down as they went
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At the
very bottom
in between the
stacks
he found a spot to hide.
Down here it
it let him
think as long as he didn’t do it in words. There is a world beneath the world expressed as words, a writhing liquid metal that reflects every color, shape, and sound. If you crawl under the stacks and breathe quietly, you can “think” in these forms and the fungus won’t get you.
Kid is fucking Nestle’s chocolate in here, damn. Hugging a fuckin shelf, this is just fucked kid. This is how mom found Tito after Mike Fence got fired. Watching that 2007 tape sucking his thumb. Not even 2007 shit, 2020 preseason shit kid. That’s how down bad this guy is. What coulda been, look at this friggin gameplan. Second game of the preseason, they’re running shit like this. Look how good these guys coulda been, before this guy got puppetmastered. Stevie put his finger to his lips, then pointed at Chet. You talk for me. Can’t say any more. The two sentences made the palace shake, and Stevie knew he was done talking or thinking. He crawled deeper in under the shelf and Chet followed.
Kid, if they only could see the shit you got down here. The kids got a lowkey freakshow brain. I mean what even is this. Kid? Stevie put his finger to his lips again, and then made an X with his arms. You and your hand signals. Been this way since the T, kid. What are we even doing here? Kid is salt and pepper with dust. Are there chicks upstairs? You shoulda cleaned up first kid. Six hundred pound tuna just laying on the floor puking trash up there, shit is just insane. I coulda done a once over if you let me know. The kid is a stud and he’s hiding underneath a shelf in the fiftieth level of the underground warehouse, whole house just ruined. Real Dudley Bozo shit kid, bigly CTE’d. You got a pong table up there? I’m lowkey FILTHY kid. Stevie moved his hands over one another.
Bro, from this angle, damnnnnn kid. When you look towards the stairs, it’s a tough scene. Back of your head looking like a mini sun. Making those ceiling lights SHINE kid. I guess the barber was more of a Laskie Rudolph fan, tuned you up bro. What? Kid, it’s NOT?
Stevie passed his hands over one another repeatedly. Alright, bro, I was playing done. I know it bothers you, it’s a tough situation. I shouldn’t have said anything.
Kid, you know I don’t like talking about it, but we all got shit like that. I shoulda never said I was going holocaust in the club. Forgot I was at the JCC. I mean it’s my gym bro, it’s not just a community center. My blood was just flowing bigly, I went apeshit. Hit the squat rack like a pitbull and then that ancient lady with the weird tattoo just reamed me out.
They had it out for me after that. Fuckin bullshit kid. They said I said Yom Kiptard, I swear to god I didn’t. I said win one for the Giptard bro, like the Gipper, that drunk midget with the busted hairline and the sapling calves. Rabbi Shmuel didn’t even wanna hear it kid, he had me outta there. Legit was like an ump throwing me out of a game, reminded me of when I threw the bat in Little League. I was just sitting on that curveball, just kills me I didn’t mash it into outer space. Went full Prest Malone in that dugout kid, had the concrete shaking.
FUCK. Honestly though kid, I’m gonna bare my fuckin soul right now, the worst was the Amanda Avery disaster. That’s the root of all my problems kid. I remember thinking to myself, yeah I’ll try some indica, it’s gonna be a chill night. What’s it hurt to try? I don’t wanna be sativa’d up just foaming at the mouth while she’s over. We’re just gonna watch Netflix. That’s what I thought kid, that’s honestly what I thought. Then my world came crashing down, crashed right down on me. Buried me in the rubble kid. Had the cottonmouth of a fuckin LIFETIME. I couldn’t even talk bro, I’m dead serious, I literally almost fucking died eating a bowl of cereal next to her. Throat closed up like a bank on Christmas kid. I had to drink like a gallon of water, got it all over my polo. I saw the pussy dry up in real time bro. She sold all her Chet stock at a 52 week low, just hit the eject button kid. Sold at a massive loss and was grateful, too. Grateful to make it out of orbit. Tires squealed on the way out kid. She was the one girl I really vibed with, she spoke to my soul kid. I really thought she was the one. I can’t believe it, I had it as bad as Timmy did. I was in love just like him. I really did bite through a sham pillow kid, I seriously ripped that shit apart. Took that shit to deep water, I was rolling around on the floor just snarling kid. Snapped that pillow’s fucking neck, deadass. I was so fucked up in the head. So fucking fucked dude. I just blamed it on the indica instead of blaming myself. It’s the only way I could keep going. I was barely on the rails kid. Blowing Girl Scout Cookies from T’Entenmanns Square to stay afloat. And then dickhead Stevie got me fuckin indica blunted, brought me right back to hell. Scumbag. I forgive you but that was weak shit, bro.
God, kid. Amanda Avery. She was in all my classes too, every time they did roll call I was dreading it kid. Hearing that name first, number one. Number one. I had her bro, I had her at the crib. She was sitting next to me smiling, wearing those jean shorts with the frayed ends, looking thicker than GOD KID. She slipped through my fingers and blew away. Shit haunts me to this day.
I know you’ll hate me either way kid, for what I did. I know what you’re thinking. I’m not trying to excuse it, it just takes a while to get there. It took me a while to get there.
I thought it was okay, but I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry. I know it was wrong. Timmy had his Giants thing, I had this. Found that forum you were posting on, found your username. Hundreds of posts kid. I shoulda talked you off the ledge, I didn’t. Did the opposite. Toyed with you for a while there, sock accounts and shit. Celebrity section there, sock Instagram account. Stevie TV.ertex. Instagram, TikTok, Norwood Blues. Bermuda triangle kid. After a while it wasn’t just me anymore, there were real people on there, duking it out in the comments. Stevie Teamsters came to the battlefield, the haters came too, the Tedophiles were playing both sides. I just sat back and watched. I thought it was kinda funny, I don’t know. Seeing you like this, I realize how bad it was. This is just sad shit kid. Built the mansion and he’s in the corner of the basement, worried about fungus or some shit. Just psychotic shit kid. I can’t see you like this, I really can’t. This is worse than the Ellen shit. You wouldn’t even believe what they’re saying about that. I know you thought going full DNC supersoldier would keep all this shit off the internet, but it can’t. Shit is a virus. I’m sorry I lab leaked what I did, I really am. Thought I was a god of the internet but I’m a lowly apostle. Shit is so far beyond my control, it’s crazy. It’s a set of viruses inside the supervirus, it’s basically uncontrollable. Pretty freaky. I just wanted some lowkey revenge but they were legit trying to hack your software, it’s fucked. I know the phonecalls you got kid. Whispers of secrets at the top of the mountain, rucked down to the bottom one mouthful at at time. Ten levels down to you. I woulda been doing the macarena with Jill Biden, too.
Stevie was on his stomach, staring under the rows of shelves. Hopefully you’re done with it all now kid. Seems like you’re trying to break free, finally. Been really letting the chopper loose on Instagram today. Wish I could see this Joe Biden segment, sounds like it was way too real for television. That shit’s getting buried under the mountain kid. But if you really went dudley like that, they’ll flush you out bro. Drop you like an anchor into the Marinara Trench. You’re better off that way. Go independent, get a new hairline if you really want it. If you really think it’s that bad. It’s not, but whatever, you’re the star kid.
Stevie nodded. The fungus was waiting, just waiting for him to think again. Isn’t there some medication that’s like super good? My professor was on that shit, I swear to god kid. 2020 he was like Adam Silver, 2021 his office hours were like the club. I know you know what I’m talking about. Kid had the super user badge, come on kid. They called you Stevie DHT, like that shit is just insane. We gotta figure this out. Stevie made another X. Jesus, take a few deep breaths or something. One second of the kid in this form could turn in a Teamster into a Tedophile, quick. I really can’t see you like this kid, I really can’t. Hold up a second.
Chet pulled out his phone and his face lit up. The fungus seemed to recede a little. Stevie felt less gripped. He put his forehead against his hands and his nose smushed against the floor. He smelled the oil of the hydraulic system and the dust rendered by time. It was time that made everything change forms, and the smell of time was in the dust. He thought if he snorted a line of it he could go back in time. His birth wouldn’t be far enough. Not nearly far enough.
He snorted a bunny but nothing happened. He was at the mercy of what Chet could find on the phone.
Damn kid, you’re in trouble. They don’t got much honestly. They got this picture of a fucked up mouse with a human ear on one side and a JFK cut on the other. Might make you better at music and a stud too kid. But you can’t get that chemical, not even in China or Russia. Kid’s just gonna have to ride it out. Stevie shook his head. Well, you got one other option. He handed the phone to Stevie, and Stevie found it was just like his own phone, and he could read it.
It was an obscure, barely commented on thread from 2014, on the Norwood Blues forum. The Greeks, frustrated with the ineffectual nature of horseradish and pigeon droppings rubbed on the scalp, had noticed the eunuchs never seemed to lose their hair. Researchers at Duke University in 1995 were able to confirm this finding in a longitudinal study of males who had lost their testicles. None of them had full scalp visibility, and the vast majority of them stayed more intact than a Norwood 2.
I’m kidding, kid, Jesus Christ. Stevie was in the bathroom of the hotel now, the memory palace somewhere else, still standing and still ruined. He found what he was looking for in the third drawer of the cabinet. A pair of scissors five inches long, and heavy enough to cut. Chet was gone and it was just Stevie now. The phone was still facedown and dead looking. He checked for cameras but not hard. There was work to do. Important work that he’d tried to avoid, a last full measure hidden behind the half measures he’d failed with. Mentally hard maybe, but physically easy enough. Just a little snip, like the cutting of a ribbon at the finish line. The sense of accomplishment once he was through the finish line and to the other side.
He grabbed the scissors and walked to the window. The buildings stood like the bare trees in his inner world, in their own formation. It wasn’t as good as the trees but it made sense in its own way. Life was a fractal with extra life hidden in every dimension. It started to make sense if you worked the zoom the right way.
He breathed in and knew it was right. The fungus let him think here, and he found good thoughts. The sun shone down at its afternoon best and a mini sun of light formed on the blade of the scissors. He stared into it until it made green copies on the wall. A hole of light through which all worlds were connected, good and bad. He gripped the scissors tighter and went to the bathroom to do his work.