Trevor and his friend had been trying to kill each other for the last two hours, but right now Trevor was closing in. He had already weakened Daniel with a shot to the left leg. Now he peered around the corner of a building, across the abandoned, moonlit city square. A dead fountain in the center was full of debris and pocked with purple graffiti. The skeleton of a car, windows smashed, tires scavenged, sat empty in the street. A biohazard sign hung upside down from a door. No movement anywhere.
Trevor edged out, then crouch-ran to the car and hunkered behind it, lifting the long nose of his Sig-Sauer MG 338 through a window frame. He squinted, shoulders tense. He felt the hair on his arms lift, like hackles. His salivary glands prickled.
A shift — Daniel melted out of the blackness of a doorway — Trevor raised the scope and fired and watched Daniel reel, clutching his shoulder, where darkness spread. He stuttered back on his good leg.
Trevor’s head rang with elation. He had done it; he had won. He started to rise —
Daniel reached to his belt —
BOOM.
An orange flash smoked Trevor’s middle — Daniel’s grenade. Trevor watched as his own avatar wheeled back, arms aloft like goalposts, his body splitting in midair so that his legs stayed by the car and his torso skidded ten feet away in a pool of maroon blood. His avatar’s face was frozen in a rictus.
Daniel jumped on his working leg and pumped his working fist in the air repeatedly. His character had dreadlock-like tentacles that spread from his otherwise human head and bounced every time he moved, a side effect of the rampant nuclear fallout in the game. Daniel messaged onscreen.
Daniel: take that bittttch
Trevor: bruh
Trevor sat back in his computer chair. He hadn’t been aware he was leaning so far forward. His neck was stiff and his eyes were gummy and dry. As the adrenaline whooshed out of him, his joints felt weak. Daniel was sending a string of middle finger emojis, followed by a string of eggplants.
Daniel: dude you went down
Daniel: went down faster than your mom did last nite
Trevor: I blasted your ass
Daniel: yeah right
Trevor: I shot you first
Trevor: fuck you
Daniel: your so triggered
He followed it up with a laughing emoji. Onscreen, he had limped out into the square and was jumping up and down on Trevor’s severed torso.
Trevor: Imma smoke you next time
Daniel: do it hombre lets goooooooo
Trevor: tomorrow
Trevor: have to do homework
Daniel: ur scared pussy
Trevor: dude I gotta go
Trevor hesitated, then messaged again.
Trevor: do you ever feel like shit when you’ve been playing for hours
Daniel: naw cause I don’t eat shit like you
Trevor: but like do you ever feel hungover
Trevor: like you come out and your exhausted and everything else is boring
Daniel: u just been eating my shit bro
Daniel: steady diet of my shit
Daniel: you rim better than your mom
Trevor sent him a middle finger emoji and logged off. He took off his headphones, his exposed ears suddenly cool, stood, and stretched. He bent back his tight wrists, cracked his knuckles, and stepped to the bed, where the family’s cat, Mrs. Cinnamon, lay curled in a ball. He thought she was asleep, but when he approached she opened her eyes calmly at him, as if she had already known he was there. Her gaze always felt like that of a teacher who wasn’t thrilled with him, but saw potential. Her oak-brown fur was dull and patchy, the knobs of her spine clearly articulated under his hand. She was sixteen and had been diagnosed with stomach cancer two months ago. She didn’t do much these days other than lie in a ball, and her preferred place to do it was on Trevor’s bed. He liked it when he went to sleep at night and his pillow held her musty, toasty scent.
After he scratched in her favorite spot, down low on her forehead, he left the bedroom to go downstairs. He hadn’t realized he was starving.
The kitchen was dim; for some reason they always kept the overhead lights off in the room after dinner, even with the whole family still awake. But his sister Lila was there, mashing some kind of brown powder into an avocado. Her cropped hoodie said GIRLS WHO CODE, and her blonde hair and crystal belly button stud shimmered in the low lights as she moved. She was fifteen, two years younger than him. Trevor pulled a bag of Bugles from the cabinet.
“You can have some of this instead if you want,” Lila said. “It’s way healthier.”
“Bugles are healthy.” Trevor capped his fingers with conical chips and began tonguing them off.
“They’re fried.”
“They’re air fried or something. They’re made out of corn. It’s a vegetable.” A pimple on Trevor’s right cheek kept itching. He scratched the spot with the point of a chip.
“Corn isn’t healthy,” she said. “It’s in everything now. There are all these farm subsidies and artificial sweeteners and basically our DNA is turning into corn.”
“That makes no sense,” Trevor said.
“You have to watch out for your corn mass index so you don’t get diabetes. And inflammation and stuff. Sure you don’t want some avocado-cacao pudding?” Lila spooned some into a bowl and packed the rest in a container.
He dipped a chip-topped finger into the pudding in her bowl and licked it off. “That’s what the Ninja Turtles’ shit tastes like.”
“I’m just trying to help,” Lila said. “I’m just saying that I want you to take care of yourself.”
Trevor felt his phone buzz and ate another chip off his finger so he could check the incoming email. Congratulations on your acceptance to University of Wisconsin-Stout! His stomach tensed.
“What is it?” Lila asked.
He put his phone back into his pocket, then scooped more of the pudding out of her bowl with a bare finger. “You’re eating Shrek shit.”
“God!” she screamed, and left the kitchen with her snack.
As soon as she was gone, Trevor walked more quickly than usual up the stairs. Back in his room, he tossed the Bugles bag on the bed and flopped down next to Mrs. Cinnamon, opening the email on his phone as he adjusted himself on the pillow. Images of diverse students crossed the top of the message: smiling together on a bench, jogging, peering into a beaker. The letter was long, welcoming him to next year’s class, and providing links to accept the offer, look at housing, course catalogues, financial aid…
He logged into the standardized applications portal, and there it was: a green check mark next to the University of Wisconsin-Stout, the only one in a column of gray circles, for the applications still awaiting a decision, and red X’s. He did a Google image search for Stout, Wisconsin. White snow, white people. He went to the university’s website and browsed some of the course titles. Intro to Biomedical Engineering. Eco-Conscious Urban Planning.
Ethnocentrism in 19th-Century Literature. He wished any of that sounded interesting. He wished the grinning girls on the website didn’t look like the kind whose friends would mouth “sorry” across the room at them if they were paired with him for a class project. He wished the school wasn’t in a town called “Stout.”
He checked his inbox again. Study guide for Industrial Revolution test — this Friday, from his social studies teacher. Trevor knew he ought to study for the test, so he cracked his knuckles, opened the textbook on his phone, and read two paragraphs about the East India Company, but he had to look up the word “avarice,” and there was an ad on the page for teeth aligners — invisible, fast, only $299 down — and he opened his front-facing camera and bared his lips to study his teeth.
Mrs. Cinnamon started dreaming and he put down his phone to hover his hand over her back, her twitches tickling his palm with her hairs. She seemed even more brittle when she dreamed, like every movement could unhook her bones. For a moment he felt jealous of Mrs. Cinnamon. She didn’t have to think about the future because she didn’t have one. And because she was a cat. The instant the thought entered his mind, it was replaced by guilt. When she was done dreaming, he went back to the textbook, reread the last paragraph plus another two sentences, then switched to the university’s website to look up pictures of the dorms.
There was a blurb about the campus fitness center, with a picture of a student perched halfway up a rock-climbing wall. Trevor stared at the stark shadows of the guy’s calf muscles. He clambered off the bed, gently, so as to not disturb Mrs. Cinnamon, stripped off his hoodie, and fumbled his phone into his left hand so he could hold out his right arm and flex his bicep for the front-facing camera. Did he have man-boobs? They looked too pointy, like possum noses. His stomach wasn’t flat enough either. He grabbed an undershirt that was strewn on his beanbag chair on the floor and put it on, flexed his right arm again, then tried a picture, shuffled his hair around, tried another, changed the angle so the light hit his nose in a better way, took another. He posted it on Instagram with a caption: When you crush arm day
He sank onto the beanbag with his phone, next to the trumpet he’d played for one year in middle school, and the soccer ball he hadn’t touched in longer than that, and the stuffed carrot he had had since he was a baby, which he used to gum the end of, so it was warped and dark. Nobody knew that he’d continued chewing on that toy until he was seven or eight. But he fiddled with its floppy fabric leaves now, going back to the textbook, trying to keep his mind on steam engine technology, but steam engines made him think of steampunk and steampunk made him think of weapons and weapons made him wonder if Daniel thought he was trying too hard by asking that thing about do you ever feel like shit when you’ve been gaming for too long, like trying to have an actual conversation, and he wondered if Daniel ever thought about him when they weren’t playing together, and he wondered if wondering that made him a little gay, even though he liked girls, and he wondered what it would be like to be in a homosexual relationship with Daniel. An image flashed into his mind of one of the tentacle dreadlocks of Daniel’s avatar penetrating him, like in Japanese tentacle porn, and he felt relieved that the image frightened him because that probably meant he wasn’t gay, not even a little. He realized he had been scratching his face again and had scratched his pimple open. A smear of blood came away on his finger, which he wiped on his shorts.
He looked Daniel up on Instagram and saw his last picture was still the same one from several months ago, lined up with his family in front of the castle at Disneyland, all wearing differently colored ears. Sprinkled throughout Trevor’s feed were pictures of girls from school, all lavished with loving captions and heart-eyed emojis:
Queennnn
omg your hair looks so good!!
slay bitch
Hey hey beautiful
Trevor went back to his own picture that he had just posted. A stranger, Dungeonlordxx, had commented When you crush a Wendy’s biggie bag. Trevor grimaced and deleted the post.
Screw it. Homework wasn’t happening. He pulled the bag of Bugles down from the bed and surrendered to the doomscroll. Headlines, tweets, replies, titles, commentary…
Try this one trick to cure depression
The system is broken! Females are demanding high value males. All of the women want a small percentage of the men.
Nothing makes me wetter than Harry Styles in a miniskirt
Five Signs You’re Already Living with ADHD
Student Loan Debt Nears $2 Trillion
Jordan Peterson Owns BBC Presenter
I always knew he was a sociopath. He hurt a cat in our neighborhood growing up. If a kid hurts an animal, watch out.
She Didn’t Realize The Camera Was Still On When She Took A Shower
This Mister Rogers moment will hit you right in the feels
Hi I just moved here from Russia… I’m a 22 years old single female… I’m having trouble to making friends because I’m bisexual… Can you be my friend?
Chris Hemsworth’s Thor body is more insane than ever
These Foods Are Aging Your Brain
Elon Musk is about to #boyboss us all into a cold war with China
Women are women. Period. Anything else is transphobic.
Death toll in Syrian earthquake exceeds 10,000
Quit your job and start your career!
Toxic TikTok Women Humiliate Men at the Gym
These snowflakes have no identity outside of crying racism. The civil warr was one 100 years ago!!!
The Gen Z disruptors who control your life — you just don’t know it yet
If you’re not doing this one thing, your teeth will suffer.
Officer acquitted in choking of Black teenager
The Insect Apocalypse: In ten years, will we have food?
Not Kylie Jenner thinking cultural appropriation looks cute. Again. SMH
FTMTF Detransitioner: Sexual assault made me want to leave my body
This teacup pig eating cauliflower is all the serotonin you need today (sound on)
Man who burned fiancée alive says she had it coming for DMing her ex
Bezos hires investment firm to evaluate purchase of two NFL teams, as Amazon axes charity program
Everyone says this world was built by straight white men, for straight white men. If this world was built for me, why is my life so fucking hard?
Trevor felt something brush the back of his scalp. Mrs. Cinnamon had unfurled from her ball on the bed and was tottering at the edge, sniffing his hair. She yawned right on his head, catching his ear with her teeth. He twisted on the beanbag to stroke her scrawny front legs, glancing down to check the time on his phone. It was almost two. His eyeballs felt raw as he blinked. No way his homework was getting done before tomorrow now.
Sometimes Trevor wondered if anything would ever make him feel as good as porn and video games.
***
Trevor woke up late the next morning, then got stuck watching TikTok in bed, so when he got to his feet, he shoved the hoodie from the floor over his head and stuffed his notebook into his backpack practically in one move. But he still took his time scooping Mrs. Cinnamon into his arms and transporting her downstairs. Quick movements frightened her.
His mom yelled from the kitchen as soon as she heard his footsteps on the stairs.
“Trevor, you have to be out in five minutes!”
“I know!” He settled Mrs. Cinnamon in a spot of sun by the sliding glass doors. She squinted up, appraising him with one eye, as if through a jeweler’s loupe. His mom, a sunflower butter-covered knife in one hand as she made lunches, bent and petted the cat with the other hand. She had deep, wide pupils, and hair she’d worn in the same mousy bob Trevor’s whole life, though he’d seen old pictures and it seemed like she used to change it up a lot before he was born.
“Your sister’s been up for an hour and a half. She worked out, made her own breakfast, finished her homework…”
“Wow, cool story,” Trevor said, unwrapping a couple of Pop-Tarts and sticking one in his mouth, cold.
“Isn’t it?” Lila said, passing behind her mother to add a clementine to each lunch box.
“You’ll have to get up on time if you want a job at Best Buy,” their dad said. He was the only one actually sitting at the dinette table. He swirled the coffee in his cup and topped it off. He liked it scalding hot, with Stevia.
“I don’t want a job at Best Buy,” said Trevor. He cracked the knuckles of his non-Pop-Tart hand loudly against his chest.
“Well you’ve got to do something. You can’t sit around here after graduation.”
“Can you just put the dishes in the sink, hon?” his mom said to Lila. “I’ll get to them later.” She was crouched over Mrs. Cinnamon, injecting medicine into her bony side. Trevor came over to them and scratched the cat on the head, soothing her. She hissed and spat, then gave a little rumble that he could feel more than hear.
“How much longer are you going to do that?” his dad asked, eyeing the cat.
“As long as she needs it,” his mom said.
“She’s not going to get better. It’s cruel to keep her alive if she’s suffering.”
Trevor got up from his crouch and retreated to a corner of the kitchen, where he didn’t have to look at Mrs. Cinnamon while he listened to this.
“She’s not suffering.”
“She looks like a skeleton.”
“She’s fine,” his mom said, her voice going high and sharp.
“You can live in denial —”
“If you have so much time to criticize, could you help out with the dishes?” his mom asked.
“I’m getting ready to go to work,” his dad said.
“So am I!”
Trevor heard his mom’s voice hitch as she rose and began scrubbing dishes. His dad swallowed his coffee. A muscle in his jaw flicked. Then he went and stood just behind his wife and put a hand on the back of her waist. The tip of one of his fingers was missing from when he worked in construction years ago, before he went white collar. He held out his other hand for the sponge. She froze for a moment, but then jerked away and continued cleaning. Trevor caught a glint of wetness in her eye as she turned back to the sink, and he looked down.
He swallowed a last bite of Pop-Tart and crinkled the silver wrapper into the trash.
“I got into a college,” he said. Everyone turned to him. “The University of Wisconsin. Stout.”
“Seriously? When?” Lila asked.
“Last night.”
“That’s wonderful! Why didn’t you say anything?” His mom put down her sponge.
“I don’t know,” Trevor mumbled. He scratched at the crusted-over acne spot on his cheek, which was itching again.
“Look at that,” his dad said. “You can go anywhere once you have a degree. You’ll always be able to get a job.”
“Capitalism is bullshit,” Trevor said.
“Do you know how lucky you are to be able to have that attitude? You kids go on about privilege,” his dad said.
“Come on, be excited,” his mom said. “You have your whole future in front of you.” The thought was awful. The future felt like a test question he didn’t have the answer to.
“It is exciting,” Lila said. “The University of Wisconsin!”
“Don’t say it like that,” said Trevor.
“Like what?” she asked.
“The University of Wisconsin,” he said in a mocking tone, not at all like Lila’s.
“God, I’m just trying to be happy for you.” Lila leaned back against the counter, typing something on her phone.
“Would you be happy if you were going to the University of Wisconsin? Stout?” Trevor asked. “After your fancy ‘girls in STEM’ high school?”
Lila glanced at her mom, then at Trevor.
“You don’t have to go there if you don’t want to,” his mom said. “You could still look at community college, or just get a job. You can do whatever you’re comfortable with.”
“I don’t need community college. I’m still waiting to hear back from a bunch of places,” Trevor said. He was waiting to hear back from two.
***
Three weeks later, Trevor had gotten responses from the other two schools, and both had rejected him. He didn’t feel disappointed, necessarily. Maybe disappointed that he didn’t feel anything about it at all. He hadn’t told his family yet. He knew they would expect him to say yes to the one school that had taken him, but e-signing that acceptance form felt so final. A course charted.
More of Trevor’s mind was taken up with Mrs. Cinnamon. She didn’t get up on her own at all these days. The vet said there was nothing more they could do. He said they were giving her the maximum safe dose of her analgesics, but Trevor noticed her tremble more and more, waves of pain cascading down her spine. When she opened her eyes at him, mucusy and filmed, he wished he saw anything in there — love, recognition, even a cry for help — but it was like searching for a face down a dark well.
He could forget about all this, just briefly, in the most blood-hot moments of his game, when he found Daniel down the glistening depths of a large municipal pipe far below the abandoned city and took him out with a blast to the neck just as Daniel saw him and raised his own gun, right before Daniel could shoot. Aim. Strike. Explode.
Trevor exulted for a minute, strutting his avatar, with its gills and tongue-like tail, back and forth. But it felt like more of a show for Daniel’s sake than his own. The adrenaline ebbed so quickly. Turning from the chair to the bed to pet Mrs. Cinnamon used to be a comfort; now it was more of a crash to reality.
Daniel: next time imma waste you bitch
Daniel: beast mode
Trevor: ha ha
Daniel: won’t be laughing when I rip off your dick and make you choke on it
Trevor: ha ha
Daniel: bro why u keep saying that
Trevor: I’m just tired
Trevor: just feeling depressed
Trevor: Like is it normal? Do u ever feel like life is more effort than its worth.
Daniel: crybaby
Trevor: whatever
Daniel: are you going to k*** yourself
Trevor: what do you care
A minute, in which Trevor wondered if Daniel had decided he was a total limp dick and was leaving, then another message popped up.
Daniel: https://988lifeline.org/
Daniel: talk to someone
Trevor held his fingers over the keys — but then just typed one word.
Trevor: thanks
He logged off. He unlocked his phone reflexively, but there was a knock at the door. He rolled his computer chair over to open it, and his mom entered.
“Just checking to see how you’re doing,” she said, sitting on the bed next to Mrs. Cinnamon.
“You just wanted to check on Mrs. Cinnamon,” Trevor told her.
“That’s not true.” She glided a hand over the cat’s head.
“It’s okay.” He understood. He went to sit on the bed with them. He wanted to tickle Mrs. Cinnamon under the chin, but she kept her head down. Her side was taut and hard under her fur, as if she had been taxidermied. He had always loved her little pale pink nose, like a baby’s fingernail, but now it was almost white.
His mom sat with him in silence a minute before she spoke, her voice small. “I can’t do it,” she said. “When I think about taking her to the vet the last time, and… I’ve had her almost as long as you. Longer than Lila. She’s my baby too.” She rubbed a tear from her eye. “I’m sorry. I wish I could be stronger. This is a problem for me and your father, not you kids.”
“It’s okay,” Trevor said again, gruffly.
“How are you holding up? I know you love her as much as I do.”
“It sucks,” he said, and shifted his legs. “I’ve got to finish my homework, though.”
“Of course.” She ran a hand over his hair and down his ear to tug his earlobe, stood up, and left the room.
The next morning, Trevor dawdled getting ready, even though his mom got on him again for being late, so that everyone else would be out first. That way he could carry Mrs. Cinnamon out to the car unseen, along with a box he had used for a wetlands diorama in Environmental Sciences.
Then he drove around rather than going straight to the vet, even though it would mean another unexcused absence from school. He needed to be out all day so his family would think school was where he’d been. He already had a record of playing truant to go eat Little Debbie’s behind the 7-Eleven and wander around the dollar store, reading the insides of greeting cards, but at this point in the year, it really didn’t matter. So he spent the next few hours in his car, an old Hyundai Sonata in weak washed-out gold, while Mrs. Cinnamon slept in the passenger seat on the towel he’d situated for her, just so. He couldn’t think about what he was doing. He couldn’t think about any of it. Instead, he pretended that the street signs were targets, and he was training his barrel on them as he passed. Aim. Strike. Watch his enemy explode. Aim. Strike. Explode.
When he got to the vet, he scooped the cat up towel and all, to disturb her as little as possible. In the waiting room, he held her up to his chest, rather than resting her in his lap, so that he could catch her toasty scent, though it was faint now, as if wafted from next door. She kept her head tucked between her arms. She was so light.
Trevor had gone to a different vet than their usual one, to avoid questions. “You’re awfully young to be doing this on your own,” the doctor said. He had a candy cane sticking out of the pocket of his white coat, and Trevor wondered if that was for the pets or their owners, or for himself.
“My parents couldn’t get off work.”
Trevor kept his responses short and quick during the rest of the questioning and brief exam. He fixated on the candy cane while the man administered two injections, one to put Mrs. Cinnamon to sleep, one to stop her heart. Trevor rested a hand on her head the whole time, even once he knew she would no longer be aware, and after the first shot, he felt her shivers of pain stop. He kept his back teeth locked together, focusing all his energy on that hardness. It was difficult to form the words to ask if it was over.
“All done,” the vet said. “She did very well, and so did you. Would you like to look at our cremation options?”
“No,” Trevor said immediately, pointing to the box he had waiting in his chair. His other hand still rested on her head. He didn’t know if he could lift it off. “I’m taking her home. My family will be back soon.”
“Ah, okay. I’ll let you get home to them.”
Trevor knew he should move now, but he felt frozen, on the edge of some steep precipice, curling his toes over the rim to keep from falling, holding his breath. He didn’t trust himself to speak, and he didn’t want to take his fingers from Mrs. Cinnamon’s still-warm fur. Then tears were rupturing from his eyes, stinging and hot, more tears than he knew he had in him, and his throat choked on staccato, gasping sobs.
The vet pulled him in and bent Trevor’s wet face to the shoulder of his white coat. Trevor let his arms hang limply and his hair fall to tickle his forehead, and he didn’t care that he was making sounds like an animal. “It’s okay,” the vet said. “It’s all going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.”
On the drive home, with Mrs. Cinnamon and her towel laid in the box on the passenger seat, Trevor felt the shaky, vibrant energy of having just vomited. Every leaf was as defined as if it were cut out of steel. He was sad, yes, but also purged, exquisitely awake. It was like, in his games, the rush of a perfect kill.
He arrived home before any of his family and carried the box upstairs to his room. Sitting next to it on the bed, he found the University of Wisconsin admissions email on his phone, logged into the portal, and accepted their offer.
***
Trevor waited until everyone else had gotten home, early that evening, then told them. He said that he was at his desk doing homework, and the next time he turned around to check on Mrs. Cinnamon, she wasn’t breathing. It must have been very peaceful, he said. She didn’t make a sound.
There were tears from Lila and his mom, and his dad hugged his mom, pressing his lips to the top of her hair. “Where are we going to bury her?” Trevor asked his dad. “Under the tree out back?”
“I’ll find a spot,” his dad said.
“I can help.”
“Don’t worry about it, kiddo, work on your homework. I’ll take care of it,” his dad said.
Trevor didn’t know how to tell him that he was worried about it, and he wanted to worry about it, and he wanted to do this together. Instead, he went up to his room and sat on the edge of the bed, avoiding the spot where Mrs. Cinnamon last lay, because he didn’t want to adulterate the traces of her smell. He watched out the back window as his father dug steady shovelfuls of dirt, moonlight whiting out his back every time he bent over. Some of that bright silvery clarity Trevor had felt earlier faltered. His father didn’t want or need his help. He had thought he was doing the right thing, but what good was anything he did at all? Had he made a terrible mistake? Had he fucked this up, like everything? How could he sleep without her warm breath bathing the crook of his elbow?
For the next couple of hours, Trevor buried himself in the game, chasing and being chased by vigilantes through the dark halls of a derelict high school and into the gloomy green waters of a reservoir, until it was just him and Daniel left. He killed Daniel in the end, but it didn’t really lift his spirits.
Daniel: fuck u bro
Daniel: its not fair you have gills
Trevor: you got to create your own avi
Daniel: eat my tentacles
Trevor just couldn’t summon the mood. He changed the subject.
Trevor: I got into college. I just accepted an offer
Daniel: where at
Trevor: U of Wisconsin
Daniel: lol cheese
Trevor: lol land of cheese
Trevor: I’m not really looking forward to it though
Trevor: like why am I even going
Daniel: your going so you can fuck college girls
Daniel: and then you can get a job and make money and fuck older girls. get that maserati snatch
Daniel: or like toyota lol ur only going to u of wisconsin
Trevor: yeah exactly
Daniel: dude its good though
Daniel: I probably won’t even get in anywhere. You should be happy
Trevor asked himself honestly for a moment what that meant. What that would look like — happy. The image that flashed into his mind was of petting Mrs. Cinnamon.
Trevor: I had to put my cat down today though
Daniel: lol wut why do you have a cat
Trevor: she’s a family pet
Trevor: she was
Daniel: sorry bro
Trevor: we had her my whole life
Daniel: just a cat though
Trevor: yeah but I loved her
Daniel: aw poor baby are you sad about your pussy
Trevor looked back at the empty spot on the bed, still caved in where Mrs. Cinnamon should have been lying. He wished Daniel were here in person so he could have someone to really talk to, even hug. He wished he could pull Daniel through the computer by the stupid tentacle hair so the glass of the screen shattered all over his stupid face and cut his eyeballs to wet bloody threads.
Trevor: yeah I am sad dick
Trevor: fuck you
Trevor: your supposed to be my friend but your worse than no one
Trevor: all you want to do is make me feel like shit
Trevor: you don’t know anything about what its like to love someone
Daniel: lol pussy
Image: Portrait by Tyrone Daryl, licensed under CC 2.0.
- Straight White Male - October 20, 2023