He couldn’t take great prose. The thought of someone having written it was too exhausting.

Really, I should be grateful; performing this mindless work spares me the burden of maintaining self respect.

Normally he anticipated this cold black season with dread, but this year it suited him. It was what he deserved. He was locked in for the siege.

Some forgot to wash. Some forgot to eat. Some gazed absently as they drank milk from the bottom of a cereal bowl.

In LA the bottom finally dropped out—a numbing sequence of brilliant days, synaptic movies printed on his retinas, but underneath, blackness. He’d read somewhere that the self was an illusion. This was good news.

I know you by your habits; the grooves you have cut in the world; the familiar boredoms I would miss beyond all else.

Thank you for seeing me. I really think I’m un—
raveling.
Unrav—
Unraveling.
Wait—are you actually making fun of my voice?
Your choice of words. A bit maudlin and clichéd.
All words are clichés—that’s why they’re words, for fuck sake. I can’t believe I’m paying you 250 an hour—
And there it is—I wondered how long til you brought it up.

You droned on, demolishing in the space of a few hours any previous possibility you might have been deemed interesting.

No idea
Who the fuck knows
It’s anyone’s guess
Fuck if I know