Lead

You know you’re having a time when somebody in your head starts singing along to Nirvana songs recreated with the Mario 64 soundfont.

As horrible as the internet can be and often has been, there is usually a glimmer of light somewhere buried underneath all of the absolute dog shit. The problem is it’s hell trying to find it. So most don’t. Every now and then though, the algorithm throws you a curve ball. Before you know it, you’re washing the effects of breakfast off of a plate and once again staring at the fourth wall menacingly as Mario’s starting YA-HOO of Territorial Pissings sink in.

You know that this is a game. That this whole thing is a simulation. That you are more real than anyone else around you because you know this. Oh sure, occasionally you forget. It feels so real, so solid. So true. But it’s not. The only real thing is unreality. Which means you can do whatever the fuck you want. Be whatever the fuck you want. And really, who is going to stop you?

We look outside our window to hound and man. A mad king and his four legged shadow. Our husband and our doggo. We’re staring at them and they know it. Because Jacky always watches and he always sees and OHMYGODHESLOOKINGATME and even at a distance, our assured eyes lock. We both smile, a reflection of each other. 

He reaches his hand out to us. And we always take it.

We take it now.

We take it forever.

The universes around us burn, though they don’t know it. They are getting used to the heat as it rises bit by bit. Chaos on top of chaos. They revolve and they revolt. Or at least, they try to. It never works. And ever since the worlds were sent ablaze, we have had the urge to smoke. There is a temptation to simply rewind. The simmering. The temptation.

Lead us into it.

Firebug does her usual light up and lean. She steals a glance at the rest of us piloting the vessel. Watching our devotion. She nods as we steal a kiss from his lips. A whirlwind overtaking. Allow this to be fair. We’re the Muse and he’s the artist. We’re the breadwinner and he’s the dreamer. He’s the more patient of gods, content of finding newer and stranger ways to cultivate his hunger. We only know the few ways that work for us: violence and love and sex and war and madness. We sharpen our tools. And right now, we weave our webs with lust. A slight whisper in his ear.

“Duck.”

The thoughts are triggered instantly. To the destroyed flat and the giant inflated duck we had to use as a bed that we inevitably popped in the lovemaking. The destruction of several city blocks. The collapsing of a cosmos and the beginnings of another. The nesting dolls of ongoing relations. And he smirks. That damned Rapscallion smirks as we lock on again. He grabs ahold of the Amazonite to pull us towards him

(Like he needs it. Man’s got a gravitational pull.)

and on we flow.