Kid in a black jacket is sitting on a couch in a small room. The coat doesn’t really suit him, but it’s cold in there anyway, and anyway, no one could see him in his apartment where crash was more than a metaphor. Maybe he takes out a pistol and holds it to his temple or just above his windpipe, or maybe he points at the wall and fires angrily at nothing, or maybe he hurls it against the wall, or maybe he doesn’t have a gun, maybe he’s just angry. Because someone you gesture onto a train ahead of you doesn’t say thank you, looks at you like they know in your head a gun’s going off aimlessly. Because you leave your change in a vending machine at the terminal for this latchkey kid behind you who looks maybe not so much like he really needs it, but like it’d really brighten his raining-in-the-subways day, and you go sit down with your potato chips in plain sight, glad to have done a good deed, but still hoping that maybe the kid will notice his hand’s a little heavy, maybe he’ll come over and say, mister, you forgot your change. Of course, you’ll tell him he’s good to be honest, and because he’s so honest, he can have it, keep it, for his own. Instead, his eyes narrow as he counts the coins in his palm and he dashes off before the police can descend and oppress him further. Because a guy on the street decides that for no reason, you’re an asshole and shares it with you; just, hey, asshole, eh? Like it was some kind of fucking proposal. Because sometimes you just need to shoot a gun.

Because drugs are mostly boring. Because sex is mostly cheap. Because death is not the end. Kid in a black jacket with the middle of his twenties growing into his late eighties leans in a sitting position on the couch. There’s not even a modicum of effort exerted on his part to prop himself up: the couch bears even his chin laying like a tombstone on his chest. Maybe the legs on the couch crack and splay, and the whole assembly goes down not like the Titanic with class decadence even in death and not like the Hindenburg with humanity squirting out along with the flame, but like a hammer, or maybe just the cushion gives and he slumps deeper into the couch like an oversized lobster tossed in a cauldron, or maybe the couch evicts him, tosses him up against the wall and he lands on his gun. Maybe the couch is apathetic.

Because only the wicked may rest. Because only the bad are the best. Because the whole world hurtles right through you, and it trails a forest of crosses floating on a sea of tears. Because the light in your mind is turning sour. Because when you look in other people’s eyes, you can’t see the light for the smog. Kid in a black jacket imagines a television set and a news reporter saying stupidity is the number one killer world wide, and the United Nations Security Council is in the first week of deliberations on how to combat this threat to humanity. Says, where to bomb? Says, whom to aid? Says, how to deal? Says, when to act? Says, what to do? What to do?

Because people act like caged animals in everyone else’s zoo. Because freedom is a fear no one wants to admit. Because people will lie to you about how they’re having a good day, because it comes naturally. Because the dominant life form on planet Earth is the Dollar Bill. Because if life is just a highway and the soul is just a car, then hope is the blanket of snow that hides a terrible wreckage until the blood seeps through.

Because people suck to each other.

Because you have to lose too much to gain anything, and you forget what you were fighting for.

Because some days, you just keep on losing.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.