Woe

Never Angeline North

[MOTHER, DREAM 04] I was in the place you go when you are dead. I was in the Indiana of that place. A two-story, suburban house in the Indiana of the place you go when you are dead. I met a woman there who said she wanted to suck my dick. “I don't have a dick,” I said, and she laughed. “Well, all right then,” she said. I sucked her dick and her friends' dicks. It was all sort of frantic. I was just trying to be friendly. Someone came up to me when I was sucking dicks and asked me to be somewhere else, I turned to speak to them and when I turned around the women were leaving. I felt like I had been rude, and I needed to apologize, or to follow them to a second place so I could show them that I enjoyed sucking their dicks. I told the person who had asked me to be somewhere else that I had enjoyed sucking the dicks. My voice had a desperate tremble. They looked at me with an expression of puzzled bemusement and said, “Well, all right then.” The house was built on a hill and this all took place somewhere amongst the series of tents and people milling about that had become of the sloping front yard. Someone led me around the side of the house. A parting of the crowd caught me a glimpse of a large deer shouldering its way through the crowd, but then I lost sight of it. I went with the person I was following around the side of the house. There was a child's slide, plastic red and yellow. It came up to just below my waist. I sat on it for a lack of a better place to sit. At my feet the person I was following sat down and began playing a game I couldn't understand. It seemed to involve moving around small unmarked scraps of torn white paper, though they seemed to me to just get lost in the thick grass of the lawn, which was mowed sharp and even, like a flat top haircut. I began to cry, and soon they were crying too, but they kept playing the game, making commentary. Things like, "Oh you got me there, you're a quick one," but through tears now. “We all keep on going like everything is okay,” I said. A woman I hadn't seen before stuck her head over my shoulder and I felt her curls on the side of my face. “Oh come on now,” she said. “Has anything ever really been okay?” “Yes. Yes it has. I remember it.” I said, but I didn't try to remember because I was very sure. I knew that if I tried to remember and couldn't, then I would begin to think she was right, but she wasn't right and I wasn't going to let doubt stop me from knowing what I knew. From doing what I knew needed to be done. I heard the sound of a panicked animal from somewhere across the yard, but I couldn't see anything at all. I cleared my throat. I'm not going to let that stop me.


[PRIEST, INTERVIEW 01, 09:43:00] Priest: It's easy as a priest to think that people come to you for the mystery of religion, for those big questions, those slippery explorations. But no, that's what theologians come to religion for. What people come to me for is answers. So I give them some. What the bible doesn't answer, the church does, tradition does. It's about getting people back to their lives, to their families. I think they appreciate that, and hopefully they keep coming back and they keep the sacraments. Interviewer: What do you tell someone who does come for the mystery? Priest: I tell them to pray. If they keep praying and keep asking questions after a few years I ask if they've ever thought about entering the clergy. Interviewer: Is that how you entered the clergy? Priest: Yes. I was a very curious young person. Interviewer: Do you feel like you have satisfied your curiosity about those mysteries now? Priest: I would say that curiosity has perhaps dulled a bit for me. Now I find God in serving the community.


[PASTOR, INTERVIEW 02, 06:01:05] Interviewer: I spoke with a priest and he spoke of the mysteries of religion. Pastor: The mysteries? What do you mean by that? Interviewer: Well, he said that most people who were coming to him didn't really want answers to the big questions, why are we here, what does it all mean, what have you, that rather they were looking for answers and... Pastor: I can't speak to a, uh, a Catholic answer. Interviewer: Oh, I don't expect you to. I was wondering what your thoughts on all this are. Pastor: Well there's only one answer. Interviewer: What answer is that? Pastor: Jesus is the answer. God sent him to die for our sins. It's simple and direct. Everyone who comes to our church gets to learn about that, learn how to walk in his light, and of course learn about the bible, but it all comes back to Jesus and his sacrifice, that's the long and short of it, and that's what we teach to everyone, young and old. Interviewer: What are the differences between how you teach the young and the old, given the simplicity of this idea? Pastor: Well, you meet them where they are. Like if you're speaking to teens you need something flashy or hip. I'm no good at that but our youth pastor is about as good as they come where that's concerned. With adults they need a relatable anecdote, maybe a joke here and there. It's about being approachable. Real little kids just need a simple, short little story they can follow. That's probably the truest version of it. Interviewer: Really! I would have thought the bible was the truest version. Pastor: Well, the bible is God's word pure and true, you aren't wrong there. But most folks have some trouble with the language there, they aren't scholars. Heck most of them aren't big readers, they've got busy lives. It's the "begats," you know, all those long passages with Ishmael begat Abraham and so on? But not just that. Even the New Testament is full of complicated language and references to places that don't exist anymore. Nobody knows what a Corinthian is these days. When it comes down to it, the whole bible, the real core of it, is a story of Jesus, God's son, giving his life for us. That's the long and short of it. Interviewer: What is a Corinthian, by the way? Pastor: It's somebody from Corinth. Interviewer: Where is Corinth? Pastor: It's in the middle east. Paul went there when he was preaching.


[ACTOR, INTERVIEW 01, 00:50:14] Actor: Do you know about Joan Crawford and Bette Davis? I just watched a miniseries about them, about the feud they had. Their whole lives people played them against each other. Someone in it said something like "People think that feuds are about anger but they aren't. They are about pain." Interviewer: That's interesting. Actor: The difference between Joan and Bette was that Joan Crawford was a lady, in the classic sense. She was always herself and that self was always beautiful, full of poise. People came to see that poise, that elegance, no matter the role. At the end of her life, Joan Crawford walked into the sea and found her own death, not a hair out of place. On her own terms. But Bette Davis, she wasn't a lady. She was a real actor. A character actor. Interviewer: What does that mean to you? Actor: Orson Welles once said actors aren't men or women, they are a third sex. If my parents had known about Orson Welles and Bette Davis they would have known that I wasn't a boy or a girl. I was a tiny little actor. I can make myself monstrous or innocent, depending on the role I’m cast in. The thing about a lot of actors, especially the ambitious ones like Orson Welles and Bette Davis, is they end up wanting to get behind the camera too. When who you are is determined not only by who you actually are but by your role, it only makes sense to want a little creative control. Interviewer: That’s really interesting. I’ve heard elsewhere that other people in the industry have said you were difficult to work with. I'm curious how you would respond to those people. Actor: Here's the thing about being on a movie set. When I'm on set I don't do anything because I want to. No, I never do things I want to do. Not unless I am very alone and even then I carry an audience with me, in my mind. I do things to make the whole movie better. I guess in those circumstances you’re talking about, I thought we were all doing that together, but that was a mistake for me to think so. I got too lost in my role. It was an honest misunderstanding. An actor's mistake. Interviewer: Do you have any advice for people who might want to get into acting? Actor: Keep your distance from anyone who thinks the sun shines out your asshole. And I don’t mean the superficial industry-flattery, because that’s everywhere, but like when someone really believes it. Just accept the compliment graciously and keep moving. Because that person? When they realize your asshole is a normal shitty asshole like everyone else's? That person will feel hurt and betrayed and try to hurt you right back. Sorry, I can curse here, right? Interviewer: Yes, that's fine. Actor: Because here's the thing, you might even start to not trust people who are kind to you. If you end up there, at first after getting hurt like that you'll find yourself starting to hang out with obvious assholes. But that's a mistake. You're overcorrecting into a more transparent version of the same problem. The truth is that some people are actually just really kind. It's not always a front, or about putting you on a pedestal. You can tell the difference because they're kind to all types of people. Not just you. They're kind even to the deeply flawed ones they don't care to impress.


[MOTHER, INTERVIEW 03, 16:03:03] Interviewer: You were mentioning the other day. What happened the other day? Mother: Oh, that. It was notable only because of the feelings I found myself having. I was driving on my way to work and I couldn't make myself do it. I drove right past it. Interviewer: Where did you go instead? Mother: That's the thing. I make this decision, the decision to be late to work, or maybe even not show up. And what do I do with it? I turn around and head to the other side of town, because there's some medication I need from the pharmacy. Interviewer: What was the medication? Mother: I don't even remember, that's not the part that's notable. As I was driving I found myself wanting to scream and cry. I was so angry at myself. I decided to not go to work and instead I ran an errand. All that kept running through my head was “Is this the extent of my wanderlust? The fucking smallness of my rebellion?” Interviewer: Are you on a lot of medications? Mother: I said that doesn’t matter.


[WAR CRIMINAL, INTERVIEW 01, 00:00:00] War Criminal: Hobbes wrote about the government as a Leviathan: this mythic, invisible machine that can execute justice fairly based on laws that were created democratically. Interviewer: Oh? War Criminal: That’s the good stuff. I think government should be even more impersonal than it is now. It should have no humanity involved, because humans have emotions that lead to mistakes, to biases. Interviewer: What about empathy? Where does that figure in? Do you believe that the ideal government would be one created by actual machines? War Criminal: I think actual machines would make an incredible government so long as the people got to vote. Democracy is paramount. A machine doesn’t say “This law that is written to apply to all people. It doesn’t apply to you because you are black, or because you are gay.” A machine treats all equally. Interviewer: And empathy? Does that have no place in government? War Criminal: Here is the thing. When you’re dealing with those really big decisions, not just those big-red-button thermonuclear decisions, but also those where you are looking at where to do more strategic bombing: taking out military targets, stockpiles, places where an enemy leader might be hiding, etc. So often with those decisions it’s easy for a person to get caught up in fear of doing the wrong thing. And time is crucially important in those decisions. The fear that not making the perfect choice will cause you to do harm is exactly what your enemies are hoping will stop you. A machine doesn’t have that. A machine can figure out timing to the millisecond. Interviewer: Should humans factor into this at all? War Criminal: Absolutely. Humans decide what we put into those algorithms. Leaders do. Military intelligence does. Humans–citizens–vote on who those leaders are. Humans should be involved at key points in the process. For example, when we were in Syria, we got word that there was a depot under a bridge that also served as a major thoroughfare, and– Interviewer: Sorry to interrupt, but I’m curious, what was that like, being in Syria during a conflict like that? War Criminal: Oh, I mean I was in San Jose. I didn’t go there. It was very dangerous. We just create the tech and work with the DOD or whoever on implementation. We’re lucky because this is one of the few things left where you find broad bipartisan support on what we’re doing, so our work isn’t affected by the election cycles so much. We also work with some foreign governments. I’m doing a keynote at a conference in Tel Aviv in April. They have some incredible tech in this realm. Interviewer: I see. War Criminal: Ideally we could replace a lot of military functions with machines. We could keep our troops at home, away from danger, and just send in robots. Sort of like we do with drones now, but doing all of the fighting, not just bombing. We could fight a whole war and suffer no casualties. Interviewer: No casualties at all? Is that even war at that point? War Criminal: It is! It’s the safest war. One with zero deaths on our side.


[TEACHER, DREAM 02] I woke up in bed because there was a scrambling, scratching sound somewhere else in the house, and a clatter of metal, like an animal had gotten in. When I left my bedroom, the house wasn't my house, I was upstairs and there was a, what do you call it, like a balcony where the upstairs overlooks part of the downstairs? Anyway, it was like that, and I leaned over the rail and there was a man there, looking up at me. The linoleum was torn and these huge black smears were covering the whole center of the room leading out to the door. It was like two somethings with paws and claws that were covered in oil had had an awful fight in the kitchen. The man stood in the middle of it and he looked pale and sweaty. "It's here," he said. "What's here?" I asked him. "Children's disease," he said. "This house…it has children's disease." My stomach felt like it dropped a thousand miles. "Do you have it?" I asked. "I...I don't know," he stuttered out. "Look," he started to say, but I didn't wait for him to finish. I ran into my bedroom and locked the bedroom door. We had one of those electronic fingerprint locks, so nothing wouldn't be able to get in. I shoved my sleeping wife onto the floor. "We have to go," I shouted, and threw the window open. My wife's face looked beautiful and confused, her hair all over. I heard our bedroom door start to crack as something threw its whole weight against it. "We have to go now," I yelled. I scrambled headfirst out of the window and landed with a thud on the lawn. When I looked up there was a man on a horse, smiling at me. A cloud of birds blacked out the horizon. He had a rifle and he pointed it at the crown of my head. The sound of his shot happened at the exact same moment my wife's body hit the ground. I felt a tiny spot at the very top of my head explode into a million little pieces of light and there was nothing.


[FATHER, INTERVIEW 01, 00:00:00] Father: I'm sorry I was late I got pulled over Interviewer: Pulled over for what? Father: They gave me a DUI Interviewer: You were drunk driving? It's pretty early. Father: No, no. Apparently "under the influence" can mean a lot of things. The traffic cop said that even being too emotional can be a thing to be driving under the influence of. Interviewer: How did they know you were emotional? How do that even determine that? Father: Apparently my driving looked emotional. Even to an outside observer. He said it was a clear case of emotional driving. Interviewer: What were you feeling emotional about? Father: I don’t think I was feeling emotional, particularly. I was thinking about being a Dad. One of those moments where you zoom out. I was thinking about how as a Dad, as a parent, you find yourself having to make all these decisions that affect a person’s whole life for the rest of their life. And you end up making them moment-to-moment. You’re so busy, there’s always so much going on. You don’t get a lot of time to reflect except after the fact. Interviewer: That’s a lot. Father: It is a lot, I guess. Before my oldest, I remember conversations my wife and I had about having a baby. We talked about it growing up, but it was always about having a baby, and then like, dreaming about it leaving for college someday, about becoming grandparents. We took it a step at a time. I think I like, prepared myself more than a lot of dads for what it would be like to have a baby. I was ready for the sleepless nights, the crying, the feeding, the changing. But you don’t have a baby for very long, because soon you have a toddler, and as soon as you start to get the hang of that you have a kid in kindergarten, and so on. I think most parents are good at one, maybe two stages of development. Just like, naturally inclined toward them. And the kid reacts to that. The kid thrives during that age. My mom was great with toddlers. Being a little kid was so fun with her around. My dad was great with me as a preteen, which wasn’t a word then, but I guess that’s the time. When I hit 9 years old my dad and I had so much fun, right up until I was about 13 or so and started getting really into girls. One day he was taking me to basketball practice, then I turned and 13 he started to seem like this weird, flustered old guy all of a sudden. Interviewer: What ages do you think you are good with? Father: I’m good with teenagers, actually. I’m pretty proud of that because most parents aren’t. I ask questions and I listen to them talk about anime or v-tubers or, hell, ping-pong or whatever arbitrary thing they’re into that week. See? I know a little bit about it now. I don’t always understand everything, but usually if you listen and ask simple questions they will talk. It’s nice being able to hear my kid have passion about these silly kinds of things and not always have to be the rule enforcer. My girl’s friends call me “cool dad.” I have to say I’m a little proud of that. I was lost with her when she was younger though. I don’t know what it is, but children’s media these days gets under my skin, and I can never figure out what will be fun for a kid or how to talk to them. Interviewer: If you could go back, what advice would you give yourself before having kids? Father: I would say, “Listen, it’s going to be scary, and there will be years where you feel totally lost. Don’t worry about it. You will fail sometimes. But you’ll also nail it sometimes. You can choose to be better than your parents were.” Interviewer: Any particular struggles worth highlighting? Father: After my wife and I separated, my wife fought for custody. I think that was hard on my girl. She started using he/him pronouns, you know? And her mother, she didn't get that. I was scared for her, because I didn't want her going through that, being LGBTQ and living in a house where that wasn't accepted. So I got a lawyer and we made that part of my argument in court. I'm just worried about her, you know? Like so many people don't get the pronouns nonbinary trans thing, it seems like a hard life. I didn't want her choosing that kind of hard life, but I know that supporting her is important, so I'm doing that. I don't want to be like my parents would have been. Interviewer: What do you think your life would have been like if you didn't have kids? Father: I guess it would be mostly work. Maybe some more time with the wife, with my extended family. Travel maybe. I’ve always just assumed I would have kids. I think Mom and Dad and Carrie (that’s Dad’s girlfriend) would have been upset if they didn’t get to have grandkids. I look forward to that myself. Having grandkids will be better than having kids, though. You get to take them every once in a while to do something fun, go to the zoo or whatever, buy them presents, maybe break a few rules their parents made, let them stay up late and watch movies with you. Then they go home and you can, you know, read a book, relax.


[PRIEST, DREAM 11] I was in a place that kept moving with a slow steady trot. It moved the way wolves move, taking me with it. As it went through the cold city, the wind and the motion pushed snow up my dress. It was the last snow, an onion snow. I pulled my dress up to get the snow out and saw this beautiful, like, forest of cuts along the pale white sky of my body that were mirrored by the cuts of trees along the horizon. It felt like the place and I had a name together. A whole mouthful I couldn't pronounce that had too many ffffths and thhhthhs. A 2000 Ford Focus traveling at 80 miles an hour crept up to us, keeping our pace until a faster car drifted into it, the driver asleep while blasting the audio from the 2005 Scripps-Howard spelling bee from his speakers. I don’t know how I knew what year, it was like all this information was just there. I jumped from my place and stumbled across the pavement to make sure everyone was okay, and as I approached I heard the words of these children spelling. "Can you use the word in a sentence?" the car said and this smoke was just curling from its body. I approached slowly, like a wolf myself, and the world seemed so silent in the snow. "Ytterbium is an example of a Lanthanide." The distance seemed to grow longer and shorter the more I walked. The carcass of the 2000 Ford Focus, its hood carved nearly paintless by pavement and inertia, lay on my right. As I came closer, I saw the hood, crumpled and wet with snowmelt. The windshield lay on the pavement in a single piece, both shattered and whole, and in the gap beyond it I saw my father inverted and struggling, buckled to his seat, his long gray curls falling over his head, face spidered with trails of blood. I realized there was something I needed from him, something in his pocket. It felt so important. I leaned into the wreckage and plucked it out, gentle. "Lymphoma. L-Y-M-P-H-O-M-A. Lymphoma."


[RABBI, DREAM 51] I was riding in a taxi, but the sky outside was filled with red stars from horizon to horizon. There were no buildings or roads. The ground was made from some kind of very flat stone. As we drove, I noticed the movement of the stars seemed to shift at different rates. I realized that there were certain three-dimensionalities, as if huge obelisks hundreds of feet wide and impossibly tall were surrounding us, made up of the sky itself and speckled with the light of those red stars. I looked in the front seat to speak to the driver, and saw there was just this wounded squirrel. It seemed to have had both of its eyes removed, and was bleeding on the nice leather seats. I took off my dress and wadded it up so I could use it to wipe down the seat, but when I picked up the squirrel, it bit me and I dropped it to the car floor, near the pedals. A sound of screaming air and screeching, grinding metal followed by a violent impact filled my ears, like the vehicle had crashed. When I looked out the window, I saw the ground and sky had switched places. I unbuckled my seatbelt and fell to the ceiling of the car. Opening the door was impossible, because it was mangled shut. The rear windshield was gone, and so I scrambled out of it. Outside, the air smelled like sulfur and burnt birch sap. The car was totaled against the side of one of the three-dimensionalites. I touched it and felt my naked body fill with heat. I looked at the sky again, and a voice filled me. It spoke in some accent or language I did not yet understand, but now when I think of it I can feel the meaning in my legs. The voice told me, "Here and until the end of days, signs and wonders will come to pass, but you shall not see them. You will wrinkle and gray, but still you shall not see them. The young will eat the old, the tired will eat the hungry, but still you shall not see them. You will breathe your last and still you shall not see them. Grass will grow from your cheeks, but these signs will remain hidden from you." "Who are you?" I asked it, though it remained unintelligible to me. "I am the family thing, the dead thing, the law thing," it said. "I remain useless and hidden from the world." A cracking sound filled my ears and I fell into the sky.


[ACTOR, INTERVIEW 01, 06:24:54] Interviewer: Have you been married? Actor: Oh, many, many times. I love love. Interviewer: Husbands, wives? Actor: I mean, why limit yourself? All actors are a little queer and all queers are a little bit actors. Interviewer: Do you know why that is? Actor: I mean I have theories. Actors and queers both don't need to reproduce. Not with each other, at least. Because our children are constantly being born to Republican teachers and farmers, to doctors and preachers and HVAC technicians in Indiana and Alaska, South Dakota and the Florida panhandle. They grow up and they don't fit in and they come to New York and LA, to San Francisco and Chicago and, for some godforsaken reason, to Portland, Oregon where they fuck and frolic and make art and move into overcrowded housing they can't afford because they want to live among people who let them be as ridiculous as they like. To preen and read poetry and make awful screeching music and do strange community theater in parks. Interviewer: You sometimes give the impression that there is a lot of backstage, uh, fraternizing among actors. Why do you think that is? Actor: It comes with the territory. Frantic backstage quick changes, long days and nights only around other actors and crew, many of whom were hired specifically because they were so beautiful. You can't love someone else until you love yourself, and we love ourselves so much that we need the world to see us. We practice that love together. Interviewer: You seem to really love talking about being an actor. You bring it up a lot. Actor: I think that's normal for someone in my profession. I think most people would love to talk about themselves and what they love, but they are too self-conscious. And our job is to be anything but self-conscious. Interviewer: Are there actors who don't love what they do? Actor: Absolutely. Work can grind you down. Any work. Even your dream job. But almost no one gets into this job by accident. And no one stays in it by accident. There are a million other things you can do that are less competitive than acting. But they are also less romantic. Not that the actual work is romantic, but the idea! The idea is the most romantic thing in the world. I am constantly in love with the idea of being an actor even when I hate the work, and I often hate the work. To be an actor is to be in love. In love with yourself, with your work, with your career, and with 5-12 coworkers who it is probably not a good idea to sleep with but you do it anyway because you are dedicated to your craft. Interviewer: I’ve just realized, are you performing now? Is this a character you're doing? Actor: Who knows, who cares? I'm saying things and if they mean things and they're interesting and fun, and we're all having a good time then who cares? You're not my therapist. Interviewer: You go to therapy? Actor: It's 2024, everyone goes to therapy except my mom.


[RABBI, INTERVIEW 2, 03:35:09] Interviewer: Can I ask you about something that might be a sensitive question? Rabbi: You can ask. Though you may find a relationship between the sensitivity of your questions and the, ah, circumspect nature of my answers. Interviewer: With regards to Israel/Palestine… Rabbi: *stifled laugh* Interviewer: … Rabbi: No no, I apologize. Go right ahead. Interviewer: Let me put it like this: when a member of your synagogue comes to you and asks you about the conflict in Israel and Palestine, either about what you think or about what they feel they should do, what do you tell them? Rabbi: The more the conflict escalates, the more I find myself quoting one of the secular prophets: “As I walk through this wicked world, searching for light in the darkness of insanity, I ask myself, ‘Is all hope lost? Is there only pain, and hatred, and misery?’ And each time I feel like this inside, there's one thing I wanna know: What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?” Interviewer: *laughs* Elvis Costello is a secular prophet? Rabbi: It was originally written by Nick Lowe, actually. Interviewer: The guy who wrote “Cruel to be Kind”? Rabbi: I don’t know anything about him personally, except that he apparently isn’t Jewish, but my favorite of his songs—which are often ironically upbeat—capture this...this sensitive perplexity about why the world is often so bleak. And that is very Jewish. But we were talking about Israel. Interviewer: Yes, Israel. Was there more you wanted to say? Rabbi: Out of curiosity, what did the priest and pastor you mentioned before have to say on the subject? If you can tell me, that is. Interviewer: I hadn’t thought to ask them. Rabbi: If you have any sort of follow-up interviews with them you ought to. I imagine their views might say a bit more about the current direction of the country than mine will. Interviewer: Of the US, you mean? Or of Israel? Rabbi: *brief pause* This is anonymous, right? Interviewer: Yes. Rabbi: I’ll just say this, then, by way of explanation: I don’t think Israelis tend to have a very high opinion...no, that’s not right. I don’t think Israelis pay much attention to what Jewish Americans have to say about their domestic affairs. Or their religious affairs. They might borrow a recipe for babka or potato kugel. Interviewer: But you think they listen to American Christians? Rabbi: Everyone listens to American Christians. Except maybe on the radio. Wait, no, strike that. You’ve got Nashville, soul, blues, gospel. Okay, yeah, everyone listens to American Christians.


[RABBI, DREAM 25] In the year King Uzziah died I saw a thing in the woods that looked like a man, but he moved not like a man. Slow, circling, how wolves move. I had been living on a compound and he had been haunting our edges, but this was the first time I saw him, and I knew he was some thing, some star thing, life thing, wolf thing, dog thing. I opened my mouth to call out but all that came was crying, fire, crying. It began to rain then, and my hair stuck to my face. I lifted my hands to my eyes and I felt them burn, but it did not hurt. I saw him come towards me, his mouth full of rabbit and blood, full of meat unclean. "Are you one of us," I asked and I didn't know what I meant. He called me Simon, called me his Evoker, his Conjurer, but I denied it. I am not this thing, I said. His circling grew smaller, grew closer until he dropped his meal at my feet and I could feel his breath on my neck. He whispered in my ear and I knew what he said then was what I had been waiting for. I knew it could save everything, but the sound of the rain drowned out his words. I begged for him to say it again, but he slunk back towards the edges, leaving me wet and begging, his muddy kill at my feet.


[WAR CRIMINAL, DREAM 01] I was on a beach in the Tuamotus, and there was a cat that kept coming up, trying to chew on my toes. I was surprised at how much it hurt, and I shooed it away, but it would come back again and again. I was trying to meditate, or visualize or something, trying to reach some distant brightness that I felt was mine. It was gleaming and warm, but every time the cat came to me, I had to start all over again. It was after the fifth or sixth time that I lost my temper, and kicked the cat. It clawed me, but I remember thinking at least it wouldn’t bother me after that. A woman comes over to me and I find her disgusting but I fuck her anyway. Her pussy is weird and the entrance is a deep red, almost purple and I ask what's up with her fucked up pussy. She told me that it used to be part of her colon. She tells me that the government paid a daddy in a white coat to give her drugs and cut her open and turn part of the tube for poop into a tube for dicks to fuck. She tells me that for nearly a year whenever she masturbated that blood would come out and sometimes it still does. I am so disgusted that I fuck her again but this time I do it with her face in the sand. She bleeds on my dick a little. While we are fucking the cat comes back and tries to sniff at our genitals and I kick the cat again and it claws my feet when I come. “I love the beach,” I say sarcastically. I ask the woman what she is doing here and she said she is my female cousin who used to be my male cousin who was always acting gay and doing gay things like playing Nintendo instead of X-Box. I fart. She laughs and I get mad. I kick her in her poop tube pussy and she takes the cat and leaves. I try to focus on the bright thing again now that it's all quiet but I keep thinking about my cousin, about her following me here on a boat. I imagine myself out in the middle of the ocean and her running me over with the boat, my arms and face shredded to ribbons by its propeller. I think about this and cum sadly into the sand. The sand sticks to my cum and makes a little snowman-shaped thing. I name him Senator. I pick him up and rub him in my hair. "I am a good boy!" I scream.


[SOLDIER, INTERVIEW 04, 09:45:15] Soldier: Everyone who dies should have someone crying for them. Crying needs to happen with loss. Crying is always about loss. Interviewer: What about crying when you're happy? Soldier: That's about the loss of a worry, a fear or, shit, even the loss of boredom. Interviewer: Did you cry when you killed someone? Soldier: I did for the first year or so. Every night. Then I didn't for a good three or four, unless one really stuck in my brain. It would back up and then all come out at once. Since I retired I cry every day. Not always in bed, like people talk about. Just whenever I'm alone and nothing is going on. I usually am not thinking about any specific person or feeling any particular way. It's an animal thing, crying. In those moments I'm just a piece of nature. Like a mushroom letting out spores. Like a horse popping out piece after piece of shit while it's walking, casual as can be.

Never Angeline North (she/they) is author of the books Rainbear!!!!!!!!! (Apocalypse Party, 2022), Sea-Witch (Inside the Castle, 2020), and Sara or 'I lived my life as a cloud that followed overhead' (Inside the Castle, forthcoming August 17th, 2025). Her website/blog is at the URL http://never.horse, and she has a new email list called False Potato Mother where she will email you stuff sometimes. She writes grants and lives in an RV in the backyard in Mason County, WA.