Dear Americans. Annual rituals of spiritual cleansing do not kill COVID. That is all.

Please stay safe.

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A young man joined a silent older man on a bench. Turning to the old man, his face shiny as a fresh condom, he said:

“Mayflies are going extinct. Apparently, they confuse cars paint with bodies of water. They swarm, spooge and die.” Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ,ha. He laugh hysterically inches from the old mans ear. The old man didn’t move. 

“Excuse me?” His laughter stopped. He rotated his entire body to see a woman had stopped on the sidewalk between the bench and the large retail parking lot. Holding her treats, her body made a backwards “K”, her mouth rotated forty-five degrees, her eyebrows the inverted triangle of Thewn (all hail Thewn, he thought). 

“Where’s your fucking mask?”, she said.

“Where’s my fucking mask? Where’s your fucking manners? It’s Christmas you mother fuck. You’re one of them, you filthy hole. This low-rent ass veil shit ain’t keeping nobody pure. They bust the stores and dinners and shit cause why?! Cause they’re all in there without masks, but if they had the disease they’d be sick but they’re not, they’re just in trouble with the fucking government man. But then they put them in the black prison camps where there really is a disease just to show those white folks what the fuck is what. And now you. Are they paying you, how much are they paying you?”

Her body made an “H”, her mouth was flat, her eyebrows the triangle of Thewn’s nemesis (all vengeance to Thewn, he though). “I just need to get my dad, but I don’t want you to breath on me.”

He paused, breathed deep like he had been told to. They told him they couldn’t keep him but he could come by sometimes. He was glad they wouldn’t keep him. Unless he hurt someone again. He stood up slowly like he had been told to. 

He was at least a foot taller than the woman, his long bathrobe worn from the weather. His slippers were covered in tape, his sweatpants held in place by twine he periodically used as a drying rod, wherein he laid naked under blankets til the clothes were dry and he could leave. 

His skin was often sore, and when he wore normal clothes his skin would become so inflamed that his hair follicles would harbor life that would ooze and kill the hair. He now had discolored calloused patches of barren skin emanating from elbows and knees and traveling like a plague across his body. He covered his body in lotion and activity that consumed much of his day. He frequently stole his lotion. 

“I’m sorry” he said to the woman, like he had been told to. He turned and started walking away from the woman. As soon as he was a safe distance away, she grabbed her father and dragged him quickly to the waiting car, idling with a spouse and young kids. He walked to the edge of the superstore, across the service road and disappeared into the woods.

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