Carl's Hyperhidrosis

            Carl panted in the aisle. He looked around and wiped the sweat off of his brow. He hated grocery stores. Even though he was literally a demon, he hated being in public. It made him crazy. Suddenly a woman turned the corner into the aisle and froze, staring at him. He froze too. She started inching away, and he did too. His hoof got caught on a protruding piece from the shelf and Carl fell over. All three thousand pounds of him slammed into the ground. Carl’s self-consciousness only got worse when he was reminded of his weight. The woman was too scared to realize that Carl just tripped and started screaming for help. She ran away, and Carl tried to run too, but you can’t run on two hooves, so he fell over again. He flattened his nose on the ground and rolled onto his back. Carl grabbed some Raisin Bran and got out of the store. He didn’t realize that he forgot to get a new razor until he was far away from the store.

            When he got home he sat down to relax. He had gone from threatening red to bright and sweaty red. He started making tea, when his phone rang.

            “Hey Carl, how you doin’?” Lucifer said on the other side.

            “I’m alright, I had a pretty bad time at the store today, but I’m fine.”

            “Did those 10 year olds with the squirt-guns get you again?”

            “No, I just don’t do well in public, you know?”

            “I don’t.”

            “Well like, I just get so flustered, and everything gets worse.”

            “Carl, you are literally a monster. How do you just get nervous?”

            “I don’t know—I just like, I just get so uncomfortable, I start sweating, and I just can’t stop thinking about the people around me judging me and I sweat worse.”

            “Carl, come on. You were literally born in fire, how do you have such a sweating problem?”

            “I don’t know, I can’t help it.”

            “Carl, I sent you to earth to do my evil bidding, and you can’t even get some oatmeal without falling apart.”

            Carl began to sweat.

            “I’m sorry. I really like this job. I want to keep doing it. I just get nervous sometimes,” Carl said.

            “Carl, you’re a demon, you shouldn’t get nerv—“

            “I’m so sorry, okay? I’ll try harder next time.”

            “Carl, seriously. Calm down. I have a project for you. There are some junior missionaries, mostly five-year-olds, having a meeting near you later today. I need you to get in there and torture some of those ‘perfect’ little boys. Maybe it’ll prepare them for getting molested by their priest.”

            Lucifer hung up the phone. Carl exhaled and laid down on his couch. He looked at the ceiling and groaned. He was terrible with kids. One time he was trying on cardigans, and this little girl thought he was a character from a TV show. She ran up and hugged him and said hi to him, and he froze up. He started sweating all over a cardigan that cost $100, and they made him pay for it. The money he handed them was soggy.

            Carl lay on the wet spot he made on his couch with no idea what to do. He called his mom for moral support.

            “How are you Carl?” she asked.

            “Alright. Work is pretty stressful,” he said.

            “What’s going on?”

            “Well you know how I get nervous and sweaty sometimes? I was trying to go shopping and I was nervous, and then this lady scared me, and I freaked out and forgot that I only have two hooves, and I tried to run and fell over. It was really embarrassing.”

            “What does that have to do with work?”

            “Well I got home, and now Lucifer wants me to go torture some little kids. I hate kids, mom.”

            “I know. You’ll be fine.”

            “No, I won’t. I’ll mess it up.”

            “Carl, really. It’s not that bad, you’ll be f—“

            “No, I’m going to mess it all up. I know it!”

            “Alright, listen. If you start to get nervous, just take a few deep breaths and close your eyes for a minute. If you can do it, I’ll take you to get ice cream.”

            Carl’s mother never understood his affinity for ice cream.

            “Okay, I’ll try that. Thanks mom.”

            Carl neared the church where the tiny missionaries would be. He started taking deep breaths when he saw the little bus they were on. He got to the bus and nobody inside noticed him. He closed his eyes, breathed in, and stepped onto the bus. It sunk to the side from his weight. He got inside and looked at the kids, and they looked at him. He started to sweat.

            “Mister Knickleberry!” one of the kids yelled. Mister Knickleberry, the cartoon character that Carl apparently looked like. Carl didn’t know anything about the show or the character, but he hated him anyway.

            The kids tried to go hug him. He started sweating more. He freaked out. He knocked the bus driver out of the bus, and then he jumped into the side of the bus and knocked it over. The kids started screaming, and the door was facing the ground. The bus actually had an illegal amount of emergency exits, just one, and Carl accidentally smashed the lever for it so it couldn’t be used. The kids screamed more, and their chaperone joined in. They were now stuck in the bus. Carl got claustrophobic and started to drip. He panicked and rolled around until one of his horns stabbed a seat and got stuck. He sweated and freaked out more. He got out his cell phone and called Lucifer.

            “Hello?” Lucifer said when he picked up.

            “I need help,” Carl said.

            “What? I can’t hear you over what I hope is screaming children,” Lucifer said.

            “Yeah we’re all trapped in a bus together.”

            “You mean like, you trapped them in a bus, but you’re in the bus, too?”

            “Yeah, and one of my horns is stuck in a seat.”

            “At least the kids are screaming.”

            “The police are here. Can you help me?”

            “I— wait, they probably reported a big red thing, and then if you’re not there, they’ll freak out! I’ll get you out. This will be great!”

            A red portal opened up and a black hand emerged from it. It tried to grab Carl, but slid off from the sweat.

            “Uh, Carl?” Lucifer said.

            “What?” Carl said nervously.

            “I hope the reason the hand couldn’t get a grip was because you’re covered in tears.”

            “No.”

            “Is that—“

            “Yes.”

            “Gross.”

            The hand emerged again with a towel. It wiped down a spot on Carl’s leg and grabbed it. It dragged him through into Lucifer’s office. Lucifer congratulated Carl and sent him to go take a lava shower. When he returned, Lucifer was watching the news report on what happened.

            “Mister Knickleberry?” Lucifer said.

            “Y—yes,” Carl responded.

            “So they think it’s a guy in a costume who somehow tipped a bus over and then vanished?”

            “Yes.”

            “That is amazing. I think that is the best thing I’ve heard all day. Congratulations, Carl! I think you deserve a promotion! I can move you if you would like.”

            “Yes, please.”

            “Where do you want to go? Do you want to make crazy terrifying creatures to put in South America and Australia? Or do you want to go to the North Pole with a flamethrower?”

            “Can I just have a desk job here?”

            “Carl, are you serious?”

            “Yes, I get nervous around people. I just want to be alone in an office.”

            “Fine, whatever. You can be an accountant. You don’t even have to talk to me in person.”

            A smile exploded across Carl’s face and he lit up. It was a dream come true.

            “Yes! Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Carl said as he hugged Lucifer.

            “Ew, gross, you’re already sticky again.” Lucifer said.

            “I won’t let you down!” Carl said, slipping and falling on his own sweat as he left the office.

My Political Beliefs

why are you here?

A Day in the Life of Wildaliz

            Recently while riding on a school bus, I noticed a particularly entertaining name above one of the seats. On a lot of those buses, there are little bits of paper above the seat with the names of the kids that sit there. It’s entertaining to see how many different ways people can try to spell Cameron. A friend pointed out a name above me that caught my attention: “Wildaliz.” Now most people know there’s a certain character to people who will give their kids crazy names, but it takes a special kind of that weird character to not only come up with that name, but to actually give it to their kid. I can only imagine what kind of messed up life that kid must have.

            Having strange characters in your life can certainly affect your development, but I think to have them that strange is something else. I imagine living in that kid’s world is a lot like being on acid in Disney World at times. I can see him starting his day, eating his mom’s original homemade breakfast called the Sharauquia and drinking her original homemade smoothie called the Caldelabra. He waves goodbye to his sister, Coronalanaseladanista, and gets onto his bus to sit under that little note that reads “Wildaliz.” He gets to school, and his substitute teacher absolutely cannot figure out how to pronounce his name.

“Will-da-liz?”

“No.”

“Wild-a-liz?”

“No.”

“Wild-a-leez?”

“No.”

            I’d like to be able to tell you how that dialogue ends, but I don’t know how you would actually pronounce it.

            Wildaliz continues his day, then he gets a phonecall from his mom at school.

            “I need you to come home and watch yo sista because I gotta go help yo aunt Sailioly wit her may-an problems.”

            Now he’s at home, he’s got nothing to do, and he’s hungry. He decides to look through the kitchen for some food, but he’s not in the mood for Shlorkdekollyoly, Colobiblioke, or Roliwuldeielly. And that’s all they have!

            So Wildaliz decides he should run to the store for some normal food. He thinks his mom won’t be back before him, so he should be okay. He brings the two crumpled and mashed up dollars he has to the store to get a hot pocket or something like that. Unfortunately for him, he ends up getting to the store as it’s being robbed the third time that week. The crazy Sudanian Immigrant who owns the store runs out and blames Wildaliz for being the first thing he saw.

When the police show up Wildaliz tries to give them his real name, but they think he’s trying to be smart and give them some gibberish instead of his real name.

“I told you, my name is Wildaliz.”

“Don’t get smart with me kid, what’s your real name?”

He gives up and gives them his mom’s phone number. Once the police work out that the store owner has never accused the right person of robbing his store once in his life, Wildaliz is free to go.

“You left widdout no permission, Wildaliz? I swear you ain’t gonna get no Shaloppy or Kerogelossy for a week!”

Wildaliz is forced to eat normal food for a while, which ends up actually being a real treat. That accidental system that rewards him when he gets in trouble is the one that leads to his eventual gang affiliation, drug use, and death. Maybe he would have been a good kid otherwise. Or maybe Wildaliz just has a couple quirks to his life, and it doesn’t actually get that extreme. That explanation’s no fun though.

If you don’t think that’s like being at Disney World on acid, you’ve obviously never been to Disney World on acid. I’m not saying I have, I’m just saying that if you have been to Disney World on acid, you lose the ability to think anything is impossible, ever.

Of Mus Musculi and Homo Sapiens

            Roger Sallis and Jason Pierce are fresh out of high school, and want to become filmmakers. They move to Los Angeles and get jobs working on a film set to gain experience. Roger is big and dumb. They both like movies that they think are really deep. They both like to wear skinny jeans, thick-rimmed glasses, and flannel shirts. They want to try and work on their own independent films in their spare time; while also trying to change the ones they work on professionally for what they think is better.

            Roger and Jason are new on a set, after being fired from their old one, because Roger tried to add a big speech at the end of the movie. They meet the crew and get to work.

            They get home to their tiny apartment and publish their newest movie online. They gain no popularity. They talk about the day when they get their big break online, and they can quit their jobs and work on their movies full time for a living. And Roger will buy a hare. Not a rabbit, a hare.

            They get back to work the next day. They’re still a little bummed out by the turnout of their movie. They go on about how nobody appreciates ‘real’ movies anymore.  They get home and watch a movie that nobody’s heard of before, have a conversation about ‘real’ movies.

            Problems begin to arise on the set they’re working at. The female lead is demanding more cherries and her husband is having conflict with the male lead. They get in a fight, knock over some expensive equipment. Roger and Jason try to break it up, but accidently knock over more equipment and end up with black eyes and an even bigger pile of broken equipment. The director yells at everybody and they all go home early.

            Roger and Jason fear that they’re going to lose another job. At home, they start working on making a quick movie over the weekend to try and impress their boss to get him to keep them around. It’s about a guy’s life, from the point of view of various insects. They upload it online. It’s watched six times. Three of them were Roger and Jason.

            They show up to work and try to show the director their movie. He’s too busy to watch it. They get really pushy. He yells at them. Later on his break they surprise him and try to make him watch it. He hates it. He says it’s stupid, that there’s no point in doing the insect thing, and that he wants them gone by the end of the week. They scream and roll around and Roger poops himself a little bit. Jason waits in line for a new phone and gets mugged. He yells at his muggers about how he doesn’t care about anything. They take his skinny jeans. He sits and thinks for a while, and decides that there’s no way this could be his fault, that it must be Roger’s fault again. He goes back to the set and puts on a pair of hot pants he stole from the costume rack.

            He shows up in front of the director in the middle of the scene. He tells the director that Roger alienated the male lead and the female lead’s wife, causing the fight, and that he knocked over the film equipment and dragged Jason into the fight.  The director has no time to evaluate the statement and tells Jason to go fire Roger for him.

            Jason somehow thinks this means he gets to keep his job. He makes up some nonsense about how Roger made a movie about punching babies, and rallies some of the film crew to find Roger. They walk around trying to find him and get mugged.  The muggers take everybody’s skinny jeans and Jason’s hot pants.  They tail the muggers and find out that they’re baristas who work at Starbucks. They’ve been mugging people for their skinny jeans. And they find Roger sitting in the corner, drinking some coffee. He’s at a chain coffee place. He’s a traitor.  The pantsless film crew and Jason drag Roger into an alley and beat him mercilessly for two hours. He gets a few minor scrapes and bruises. Jason cries and tells Roger that he’s sorry but he’s fired. The film crew and Jason go lose a slam poetry battle against the baristas.

            Meanwhile, Roger gets depressed and tries to make an angsty dogma in an abandoned nursery home with some girl. She’s naked and steps on some broken glass. She gets roger’s HIV from the glass. It turns out he stepped on it too earlier, and he’s HIV positive.  Roger Sallis is HIV positive. He becomes a depressed mess and accidently kills a prostitute. He moans and cries and walks around and gets mugged for his skinny jeans while he’s waiting in line for a tablet.

            Roger and Jason don’t find each other again for a while. One day Jason is walking through a mall, and he spots Roger working in a store. He’s not wearing skinny jeans, he’s not wearing thick-rimmed glasses, and he’s not even wearing a flannel. Jason talks to Roger. Roger listens to music people have heard of. Jason screams “MY BEST FRIEND IS DEAD!” He runs out crying.

A Deer in the Headlights

            You’re not a party guy. You like to hang out and drink with your friends, but you don’t like parties. Too many people you don’t know, you end up standing there like a statue because everybody you know is in a conversation with someone they know and you don’t. You look around, watch the beer pong table that you can’t join because the same guys were there all night. You try to pretend like you’re included in your friend’s conversation even though you can’t hear a thing. You’ve accepted it. You’ve decided you’re just not a party guy. That’s fine. You can spend your night at home, just hanging out with friends, or playing some video games. Your friends still try to get you to go to parties though, and every once in a while you end up at one. And every time it happens you know it’s going to be an ordeal for you.

            “Come on! Don’t be weird, come to the party, be social for once,” Charlie told you. You’re social. You just don’t like parties.

            “I don’t want to. I don’t like parties,” you tell him.

            “That’s because you’re awkward. You need to learn to talk to people. You can only get better if you try.”

            “I don’t want to. I told you, I don’t like parties. It has nothing to do with me being social or not.”

            “So you’d rather sit at home, play video games, jerk off, and go to bed, than hang out with your friends?”

            “It’s not that I don’t like my friends. I don’t like parties. Besides I’ll only know like three out of the fifty or however many people are there.”

            “Well then come meet some new people. I won’t leave you alone till you say yes.”

            “Fuck you.”

            “That doesn’t make me want to leave. Are you going?”

            “No.”

            He leans over you and starts breathing directly on your neck to try and annoy you. You say nothing. He stands up, and starts doing some dumb fake stretch to shove his crotch in your face.

            “Fine, just get the fuck out, I need to finish my homework.”

            “You can’t take that back!”

            He left, finally. The party can’t be that bad. At least you won’t have to see any of the people at it afterwards, so it really doesn’t matter if you get embarrassed. Fuck it, you should just act like a fucking idiot, because fuck that party.

            You sit in the back seat of Charlie’s car, next to Jason, with Tyler riding shotgun. You’re just going to have a couple drinks, pretend to be the lightest lightweight to ever live, and act like you’re shitfaced. Then you can just be an idiot all night and go home.

            You and your friends get there. Charlie says hi to half the people you pass. You go with Tyler to the table with all the drinks. You just sit there drinking for about ten minutes talking to Tyler, and Jason too once he showed up. Charlie returns with some chick he went to high school with, and introduces her to everybody. You just sit there, silently drinking. After another twenty or thirty minutes you’ve had enough to make the lightweight you’re pretending to be get pretty drunk. You go over to the room where everybody’s dancing to some shitty song and stand on a chair.

            “I am the queen of France!” you yell. That was the first thing you thought of. Everybody looks at you.

            “What are your orders, your majesty?” some voice in the crowd says.

            “You!” you yell, pointing to a random spot in the crowd. “You’re sentenced to death at the guillotine!” The person you ended up point at starts walking out of the crowd towards y- holy shit she’s fucking hot. You suddenly become more conscious of what you’re doing.

            “What did I do?” she asks playfully.

            “You stole! We put thieves to death here in France!”

            “No! I don’t want to die! I don’t know what I stole!”

            “You stole my heart!” you say, slurring your words even more than you’ve been.

            “Well, you can’t have it back!  It’s mine,” she says. At this point most of the people in the room are ignoring you. You jump down and go over to her.

            “Please, I need my heart! I need it to pump blood!”

            “Maybe I’ll give it back later.”

            Okay, this is getting out of hand. You just wanted to be dumb, and now this smoking hot chick is talking to you. You’re not even really drunk. You can actually hold your liquor pretty well.

            “But if you want it back, you have to do what I say. Now follow me, let’s go get a drink,” she says.

You follow her back to the drinks; your friends are nowhere to be found. She gets one for both of you.  You go back over to the area with the dancing and shitty music with her. She wants to dance with you, but you can’t dance. Maybe you can be an idiot. You got her talking to you by being an idiot; maybe you should do it again. You start dancing like the biggest retard in the state. She laughs at you; she thinks it’s cute. You can’t believe this is working. Some guy shows up and starts talking to her, and she talks back to him. Once you realize you’re slipping away from her, you decide you have to assert your dominance. You walk backwards into the guy, facing the girl. You act like you’re doing it in a joking way, so she laughs. The guy tries to get back into the conversation, but you keep standing half in front of him, and he’s gone in a few minutes.

You end up in a beer pong game with her, and you only end up having one beer, because she’s spectacular at beer pong for some reason. You win and she jumps on you. Before her feet touch the ground again there are different people at the table.  You walk away with her. You end up outside, behind the house. There’s a pool with no people in it. If the hot chick likes you being stupid then you’re going to be a fucking idiot.

“Why is this pool empty?” You yell out to the people outside. “Pools are awesome, why doesn’t anybody want to swim?” She’s laughing. You start taking your clothes off, and you jump into the pool in your underwear. She laughs her ass off, almost falling down. As soon as your head is above water again you hear other splashes. Before long the pool is crowded and you climb out to say hi to the girl again. You don’t even know her name.

“I’m Connor, by the way” you tell her.

She laughs. “I’m Lana. It’s nice to meet you, Connor.”

You put your clothes back on.

“I’m hungry,” she says. “Can we get out of here and get some food?”

“Sure,” you say without thinking. You remember that this party is about 40 minutes from your house, and you’re about to leave your friends behind. That doesn’t really matter though. You and Lana start walking to a diner to have some food. You just listen to her talk about everything in her head the whole time. You get there and share a giant pile of eggs, pancakes, and bacon with her. The check comes.

“I don’t have any money,” she says.

“It’s fine. I think I’ve got it,” you say, as you check your wallet. You have ten dollars, and the check is thirty. You might as well leave a nice tip if you’re going to walk out on the check.

“Go, hurry up,” you say between laughs as you leave with her. You get out, both of you laughing. “Let’s go,” you tell her, trying to get out of sight of the diner.

“We should drink more,” she says. “Are there any liquor stores open?”

“It’s like, one in the morning. I think they have to close earlier than that,” you tell her.

“The party’s so far away. What will we do?”

You smile. “Follow me, I’ll take care of us.” You take her hand and lead her towards the first liquor store you spot. You tell her to wait right around the corner. She knows what you’re going to do and she’s pretending that she doesn’t. She’s playfully asking as you turn the corner. You cover your face, grab a rock, and smash the window on the liquor store. An alarm goes off right away, and you jump in. You grab the first thing you see and jump back out and run around the corner.

“Go, go, go.” You say, laughing with her. She thinks it’s cute and funny that you’re doing these crazy things with her. You can’t stop looking at her, her dark red hair shining in the moonlight. Once you’re a few blocks away you stop and sit at a playground with her. You just now realize you stole some fancy-ass expensive wine. You and her share it; she drinks most of it. She’s all over you by the time you finish it, half from flirting, half from just using you to stay standing. You can’t stop thinking about how adorable it is.

“Do you have a condom?” she asks. You don’t.

“We can get some,” you say.

“Didn’t you spend your money at the diner?”

“That didn’t stop us at the liquor store.”

You lead her to some 24-hour drug store. She waits outside while you go inside. You wander to the rack with the condoms. You take a pack, and you start thinking about what to do. You get a lucky break and some guy comes strolling in with a gun. You use the opportunity to sneak out with your condoms while he empties the register.

“Holy shit this night has been wild,” she says when you meet her again outside. She thinks it’s cute and funny that you’re doing these crazy things with her.

“Where should we go?” you ask her.

“It doesn’t matter, let’s find the nearest secluded spot and rape each other,” she says. You wander with her for a while, and you find a pathway to some train tracks. You walk down them for a little while, and end up with fences on either side of the tracks, and almost no light. You and her half sit, half fall onto a patch of dirt about twenty feet from the tracks.

You’re in love.

She thinks all these crazy things are so cute and romantic, like some movie. By the time she realizes what you’re doing, your pants are off and you’re working on hers. She laughs. She thinks your eagerness is funny. She thinks everything is funny. She’s great.

Here’s the moment, the climax to your night, amongst other things. And it’s over. You breathe for a second, and then reality finally comes rushing back to you. You’ve been blocking it out progressively throughout the night, and it’s not even because of alcohol. No more being willing to do literally anything to get laid. You realize the terrible things you’ve done tonight. Someone could have gotten shot at the drugstore. You could get arrested for what you did at the liquor store. You’re also even farther from home than before, and you don’t even know where you are. You’re just sitting here, next to this chick, who you now realize probably won’t want anything to do with you once she’s sober. Like a deer in the headlights, you’re frozen, no idea what to do. You just sit there, waiting for the world to figure out what’s going to happen because you can’t.

She’s passed out there. You don’t know what to do. You can’t wake her up now. She’d be sleeping lighter if you’d roofied her. You can’t leave her alone next to these train tracks, and you don’t want to sleep here. You can’t carry her down the tracks far enough to get off of them either. You have no idea what you could possibly do.

By morning, you’re still there. You somewhat slept for a little while there, so you did make a choice, sort of. She’s starting to stir. You pretend you’re asleep.

“Oh shit,” is the first thing she says when she’s awake. You don’t know if it’s the hangover or you, and you’re still pretending to be asleep. She shoves you to wake you up.

“Where are we?” she asks.

“Train tracks,” you say.

“No shit. Where are these train tracks?”

“I don’t know. I think we were walking around for an hour or two after we left the party.” you say. That’s great; she doesn’t even know where you are.  You get up, and she does too. You both start walking. She won’t say anything to you, and you’re too nervous to say anything to her. She walks ahead of you by a few feet, and you can’t catch up with her no matter how hard you try.

You find society, and she’s making a call. She’s still beautiful, like last night, but you somehow can’t enjoy her beauty. It’s like she was projecting it at you last night, and doesn’t want to project it anymore.

“So,“ you say, pausing to try and break the awkwardness “you got a ride coming?”

“Yeah,” she tells you. You think about asking her if you can ride with her, but then you think that she might live even further from you. She stands, looking everywhere but at you. It feels like hours before her friend shows up, and takes her away. Neither of them says a thing to you. You reach for your phone, because calling for a ride is the only way you’ll get home before tonight, or even later, and you need to get away from here before the police find you. You left your phone at the party.