Oh my god you guys. I’m getting ready to go to bed, and I realize: with a fur gilet, no makeup and shitty tendrils coming out of my ponytail, I totally look like a male elf from Lord of the Rings.
On this, the first night of February, I was walking home from work, nearly 10 pm, hideously tired, cold, and angry at the vagaries of the scientific method that nobody tells you about until it’s far too late, and I saw a tiny lavender tutu just hanging out in the gutter on 67th Street. It was a little bit sparkly. And I thought how the fuck did that fucking tutu end up in the gutter, and ugh I guess I could write a story about it, and oh my god it’s over I don’t HAVE to write a story about it, and well maybe I should write a story about it anyway.
I am currently drinking a martini made mostly of chilled relief with just a vermouth-spritz of at-loose-ends (also, drinking a literal martini, because, despite February, fuck, science is the worst.)
They were all terrible. All of them were just terrible. He sat with his head in his hands, looking down at the stack of paper, each page containing a new sort of failure: failure of voice, failure of verse, blank failure, black failure, failure of enjambment and, perhaps the worst sort of failure, the failure to end properly. Probably there were also kinds of failure he had never even considered to be possible, failure of larch greeglax, or failure to include molybdenum. He could not bear the thought of starting over entirely, so he began to experiment.
Perhaps I am too excitable - too febrile! Too much yellow bile, he thought madly, so he froze a poem into a thin casing of ice and left it on the back porch throughout January. Once retrieved and thawed, he picked it up with trembling hands to look at the improvements. Its paper was cool and wet and easily torn, and a few words had blurred pleasingly into mere impressions of words, but it was still terrible.
Perhaps I am too empirical, he wrote in neat block letters on a list of potential problems, so he sage-smudged the study and rolled a poem into a parchment-y cylinder, bound it with red thread and three of his hairs and buried it at the foot of an alder during a waxing moon. He returned to the neighbor’s yard - the only nearby alder he could find - in two sennights and sheepishly clawed up the earth to disinter it. The red threads had turned a sort of burgundy from the mud, but when he unfurled it, it was still terrible.
The experiments continued.
There is a lack of formal structure: Place poem into a box with a collection of sestinas and a Rubik’s Cube, tape shut.
There is a lack of direction: Place a pin on Google Maps and name it after the poem. Print out the suggested route between there and your current location.
There is insufficient musicality: Roll poem into a thin tube and insert it into mother’s old flute, the one nestled on blue velvet.
The voice is too sober: Soak poem in brandy and cherry juice.
The voice is too drunk: Suspend brandied poem from clothesline and allow to dry into a pale brown crispness.
None of these experiments worked, and soon his apartment was filled with tiny altars to terrible poems: a saucer of ash (burnt poem, lack of passion), a dying betta fish in a vase (poem lacks humility, must be fed to a lesser being), a small papier mâché bison head mottled in mangled text (poem lost sense of both nature and history).
He had not written anything new in months. He couldn’t. All that was left was the trying, attempting again and again to convince his terrible poems to take on a new life. Live, he whispered, creating new hypotheses from scrap and sinew, breath and bone, my god, please. Please, become beautiful.
Paris, 1922
When they first crested over the horizon, they were specks. Only the most observant - or the most bored - noticed: children lying in new grass finding rabbits in the cloud cover, or the old women who feed the pigeons, clutching sacks of grain. It wasn’t yet clear what they were - uncommonly large birds, or perhaps a small flock of the new flying machines - but whatever they were they swept south-southeast with the wind. As they flew closer, more people began to look up, nudging strangers at street-crossings. “Eh, regardez! C’est quoi, ça?” Necks craned above scarves, and women with skyward eyes stumbled on cobblestones.
We watched them settle down above the IXe arrondissement, their shapes becoming more apparent, softly rounded like the breast of a young woman, peachy in the afternoon light. One bounced off of the spire of La Trinité, and as a city we winced and waited for a pop but it just lofted upwards unharmed. There were at least a dozen of them, and they jostled each other, lazily ricocheting, seemingly borne on gaiety as much as on a breeze.
They started to descend sharply before they reached the Seine, merrily bumbling between the spires of Pont Alexandre III. Those who were near her banks that day swear that they stopped in midair when they reached the river, dipping their lower bellies into the water and rocketing up in a sunbrilliant shower of droplets, scattering the geese in a flurry of squawk and white feather.
Granting the Eiffel Tower a respectful berth, they swooped over low buildings and trees. We could see them clearly by then, although this raised more questions that it answered. They were perfectly round, apricot-hued, gleaming the late afternoon sun off of their westward sides. We waited for them to keep winging over Paris, bobbing farewell over the banlieues, but they slowed abruptly, hovering over Square Saint-Lambert and then floating gently to earth.
Theories abounded, young girls in schoolyards solemnly discussing faeries, men stubbing out half-smoked Gitanes and making oblique references towards malevolent eggs, the Académie des sciences making even more vague references towards agriculture and radioactivity. But when we finally dared venture back into the plaza, they were just sitting there calm, unthreatening: spheres of peach unbroken except for a grayish line of uncertain provenance down one quadrant.
We waited for them to hatch, to disgorge insects or birds or unimaginable creatures; we waited for them to blow up, annihilating the environs with slime or fire; we waited for them to do anything, really. But they just sat, serene, globes of spring sunset resting quietly on the plaza. The most intrepid boys reported that they felt like velvet stretched thin over a tyre. We weren’t sure what to do, but before any consensus was reached, one day in late October they took flight again, bobbling back the way they came: tower, river, bridge, church, and away. No other city in France or elsewhere reported a similar occurrence, but then again, we made no official statements, either.
Soon I, perhaps the last person who remembers that summer when the strange orbs descended upon Paris, will be dead. I leave this here so that it will not be forgotten forever, not because of its scientific mystery or conspiracy, or farce, but because to this day, I am not certain that I have ever seen anything more beautiful than those cantaloupe spheres dancing bittersweet over the early-summer Seine.
Picture from this amazing collection of color photography of early 20th-century Paris.
CC:LIVH - Mini-Crossley - The Big Not-So-Easy
The street is thronged with people: stumbling, shouting, tripping over curbs in the onrush of insensate humanity. A boy is slumped against the door of a closed shop, sobbing, his friend dragging desperately at his sluggish arm; a girl entreats passers-by for help. Creighton knifes through the surging mob, intent on her destination. She flashes her ID, strides through the door, and asks the man behind the counter for a hand grenade.
“Large or small, love?”
“Large,” Creighton replies, steely, and is rewarded by a terrifying column of ice, sugar and booze in a fluorescent green plastic flask. They’re no Manhattan with housemade beet-infused vermouth, but, when in Rome. Clutching her prize, she exits back onto Bourbon Street.
20 hours earlier:
“Am I speaking to a Crate Crossley?”
“Mm? No.” Creighton answers, not untruthfully, hanging up her phone and repositioning her lavender-scented barley-stuffed sleep mask. She’s descending back into a dream about chupacabras when her phone rings again.
“Hello? Am I speaking to a Crate Crossley?”
“CreighTON,” she says, with withering scorn for someone just emerging from cryptozoological reverie.
“You’re a lady.”
“Is it that obvious?” She’s a little miffed, as her fluting voice sounds its most Bacall when she’s just woken up. “To whom am I speaking?”
“My name is Simon Larouche. I’m the part-owner of Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop Bar down in N’Awlins. I apologize if I was rude, but from what I heard about you I was expecting a man.” Creighton erupts into something between a sniff and a laugh.
“Bless you, ma’am. But you’re Crate, uh, CrateTON Crossley? Expert on the undead?”
“Only limited subphyla of the undead,” Creighton’s defensive weapon of excessive pedantry is screaming to the surface. “Though they don’t, to be fair, exactly fall within canonical Linnaean classifications.”
“Excuse me?”
“Vampires,” Creighton sighs. “I only do vampires. Zombies, mummies, ghosts, lichs, wraiths, and other revenants? Not my problem. Not that I’ve ever seen any convincing evidence that they even exist.” There’s a long silence. “What is it that you want from me?”
“I have a problem. There’s a dude hanging around who claims to be Jean Lafitte, privateer and namesake. Pale, kinda fangy. And he’s causing… problems. With the customers. Which means problems for me.”
“And you’re looking for a permanent solution to these problems?” she probes delicately.
“Hard times make a monkey eat pepper.”
“Excuse me?” It’s Creighton’s turn for befuddlement.
“I’m a Christian man, but, do what’s needed. If you just make him go away, you can’t beat that with a stick.” Creighton shakes her head, slanged-out and about to demur. “We’ll put you up in the Quarter, on top of your fee.”
Present day:
Armed with her grenade, Creighton fights her way past blaring bars, their walls lined with frozen drink machines churning hypnotically like a drunken laundromat. Shoulders hunched, she bulls forward until the neon signs and buxom women wielding trays of tooters fade into the distance, finally arriving at a bar with charmingly dilapidated brick and lanterns with real flames.
“No outside drinks,” the bouncer drawls. She tips the column back, draining it, and places the ice-rattled shell into his shellshocked hand.
“Tell Simon that Crate is here.” A man in a black bar-logo’ed T-shirt, football shoulders gone a bit to fat, emerges from behind the bar.
“Crate! Cher!” He openly appraises her pleather pants, so she clasps his proffered hand with a bit more torque to her Rachmaninoff-Prelude-enhanced musculature than she might normally have used. He shakes out his hand genially. “Why don’t you come on back? Can I get you a drink?”
“Blanton’s, neat,” but his eyebrow goes quirked. “This is Bourbon Street, and I realize that it’s the dynasty not the whiskey, but really? Um. Let’s go with Maker’s.” Drink in hand, they retreat to a small room dominated by an untuned baby grand, and Simon fills her in: vampire claiming to be Jean Lafitte, disappearing patrons, bad for business. Creighton nods.
“Is he here?”
“He usually waltzes in around one.” She fishes for her phone and Simon just turns up his wrist. “Twelve-thirty.”
“I guess I’d better take a seat.” Perching on a barstool, she pins up her hair to reveal the double-barreled pale-plum scar left from Louis’ … “ruse,” she chides herself. “Gambit, booby-trap, maneuver, stratagem. That’s all.” but she finds her fingers at her throat, circumnavigating the odd sensation that’s somehow numbness and hypersensitivity at once. She’s just texted him “hi,” when a mustachioed vampire sweeps into the bar, and he’s wearing a fucking cape.
“Allo, précieux,” a steel-twang voice grates uncomfortably close to her ear. She’d figured that centuries in Louisiana might degrade an accent, even one of a native Frenchman, but this is just silly.
“Ah! Bonsoir!” she coos. “Comment ça va? La lune est très belle ce soir, n’est-ce pas?”
“Oui,” the vampire says experimentally, smile fading a bit.
“Je pense que poissons morts sont des chaussures! Si vous ajoutez des cheveux, c’est un fête!”
“Absolutement, my dear.” Creighton barely restrains an eye-roll. It’s as she suspected. If this idiot is Jean Lafitte, she’s Madame du Barry.
“I am very impressed by all of your feats!” Creighton places a hand on his ascot, tugging him a bit closer.“So you used to use this space as a stronghold for your Baratria Bay smuggling operation! It is so exciting to be here!” The ersatz pirate nods proudly.
“I really wish you would tell me more about your heroic role during the War of Jenkins’ Ear! It is one of my favorite stories!”
“Yes, it is as you have heard,” ‘Jean’ replies in his execrable French accent. Creighton finds herself comparing it unfavorably to Louis’ and grits her teeth. “I bit off his ear, and then fought off all of the British. En garde! Pah! Poof!” he feints with a swizzle stick.
“I feel I am about to swoon,” Creighton says drily. “Perhaps you will take me to get some fresh air?” He smiles fangily, offers a brocaded elbow, and sweeps her out to a side street under the shadows of a fringy palm. As he bends his head to her neck, she deftly twists his arm and spins him around against the wall with a beringed hand tucked painfully between shoulder blades.
“The War of Jenkins’ Ear ended in 1748, and Jean Lafitte wasn’t even born until 1776.”
“Perhaps I was mistaken,” he grits with fangs pressed uncomfortably onto mortar.“Yes, I was thinking of the Mexican War of Independence, when I bit off a different ear. Someone called Jensen. You understand the confusion.” Creighton just twists his arm a bit further up, poking a stake against his frock coat.
“In case you’re about as familiar with anatomy as you are with history,” she digs it in further, splinters rasping on what she’s pretty sure is polyester, “you should know this is in line with your heart. So, your choices are: stop catfish-ing tourists with this Jean Lafitte shit and go elsewhere, or, in your own words, poof.” He slumps against her hold, voice going bayou.
“I’m sorry, I really am. I’ll leave right now, go back to Metairie. Just don’t stake me, please, ma’am.” Creighton recoils at ma’am - she’s only thirty - and he wrenches from her grip and flees up Rue St. Philip. She squints after him.
“Don’t come back now, y’hear?”
The next day:
Late afternoon, storm piling over the Mississippi, Creighton collects a paper sack of beignets and walks down the strangely tranquil streets, vast peat-rooted ferns swaying on balconies, silver light creeping through cloudcover. Powdered sugar blowing back into her hair, she wends her way from the river to cemetery. St. Louis #1. Of fucking course.
She’s leaning against a crumbled tomb, listlessly sifting mortar-dust through fingers as the clouds bank black above her, when she hears a hiss. Don’t tell me it’s zombies, she scowls, that is an ontological dilemma I cannot even deal with right now, at least not without another Hand Grenade. The hiss echoes again, and she tracks it towards a mausoleum with a door slightly ajar.
“Mon ange! Venir ici!”
“Louis? What are you even..?” She frowns into the gap.
“Jean told me you were here.”
“Jean Lafitte? That asshole? Is not really Jean Lafitte. Jean Lafitte died a hundred and ninety years ago.”
“At sea,” Louis qualifies. “His body was not found. But that does not matter. I have come to have dinner with you.”
And so it was told that the Aesirnimals lived together in Asgardlyn, and by and large it was a good place. There was Odin, a stuffed dog broad of chest and droopy of ear and of brow, attended by his wife Frigg and his two ravens, Hugs and Mugs. There was Thor, the brownfurred bear wielding his great hammer, and there was Freyja with her golden kitty fur and witchy eyes. And then there was Loki, a tattered and wily Aesirnimal that could be taken for a hare, or a donkey, or even a fox, depending on the angle and the light.
Sometimes the Aesirnimals crossed the Rainbowilliamsburg bridge to Midgardtan to mingle among mankind. These forays became rare, though, after Thor visited the Toys ‘R’ Us in Times Square and came back with a wild glint to his eye, forever unwilling to talk about it. Whichever the realm, they dealt in playtime and in magic, in fierce battle and unflinching naps.
Not all was a teddy bear’s picnic in Asgardlyn, as the Aesirnimals could fight bitterly amongst each other. Loki became enamoured of a particularly virile rocking horse, disguised himself as a mare and came home eleven months later with an eight-legged rainbow-maned pony that smelled of cherries. He gave it to Odin, and Odin spake, “I like My Little Sleipnir and all but don’t bear any more eight-legged horsies, Loki, that’s just gross.” Or the time that Loki accused all of the females of loose morals and looser stitching, and not until Thor raised his hammer and spake “dude, your Brony son is literally in this hall right now, do you really want to go there?” did Loki subside. Or the time that Loki… okay so perhaps it was also told that Loki is kind of the common denominator here.
But perhaps the greatest ordeal faced by the Aesirnimals was when Odin, unhappy with the realm of knowledge available to him, decided that he must expand that knowledge. To do so, he realized he had to possess the runes, and so he told the others what he must do. And Frigg spaked in return, “Odie, we can just go visit the WTC construction site whenever you want” and Odin said “Runes with an E not an I,” and so his will was bound.
And so his body too was bound to Yggdrasil, the World Tree, with one root reaching to heaven and one to hell and one that would reach to the realm of the frost giants but it keeps getting chopped down by the MTA because it is encroaching on the L train tunnel. Not even Ratatosk the squirrel would bring him succor, and the ghosts of men passing by only took pictures of him, which was annoying, but Odin did not falter. He hanged there, and on the ninth day he screamed and woke and the runes were his.
And Odin spake: “I have discovered the runes, and understand more than anyone has understood before or since, except they do not seem to cover… oof… Can you help me get down, guys? Guys? Where are you? This isn’t funny anymore. There’s a Pooh on a tree across the street who is probably trying to get the runes too, except he has a radio, which isn’t really fair, and also this is kind of my thing, guys. Guys?” And so it is told that Odin remains there to this day.
Jane! My dove! I have invented the most marvelous treat! I call it: s’more. Truly I beg of you, return to me! Also, bring chocolate.
On the train, there was a girl carrying one of those Madewell New York state tote bags, and for a while the only bit that was visible was a corner that said, “You can thank Rochester for s’mores!” and it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize it meant Rochester, NY, and not Mr. Rochester, like, maybe there’s some apocryphal side-plot of Jane Eyre where Rochester invents s’mores? While toasting marshmallows, over the fire set by his crazy attic wife, I don’t know, in between the times when he’s busy knocking his eyes out? S’mores.
CC:LIVH: Contrivance and Compromise
A fine snow sifts down, turning red lights into glacé cherries as streetlights strew confetti. It’s a glimmer on the air but a bastard on the feet: in the thirteen minutes Creighton’s been on the balcony, she’s seen five people bite it. She winces, hands winding tighter on wrought iron, thinking “don’t think bite.” Especially since Louis is hovering (literally hovering, his Pierre Cardin oxfords easily inches above the grating), making shooing motions with his hands back towards the goldlit window. Creighton interrupts her circular breathing, learned during an unfortunate affair with a didgeridoo player during a high school summer program at Sarah Lawrence.
“I’m thinking,“ she snaps.
“And thus, being,” Louis replies, worrying his cufflinks, “but you will not be being for very much longer if Fiona suspects something.” Creighton produces several cigarette butts from a baggie in her coat pocket: Nat Sherman Fantasias.
“Et voila. My excuse. And never doubt my attention to detail.” She stretches her hand into the light: they’re all the pink ones. “Renfieldessa needed a smoke after the excitement.”
“I hate to ask” - it’s Louis’ turn to wince - “but just in case, have you any more of that vitamin, the one you used for Minerva?”
“It’s really difficult to get a non-hydroxylizable cholecalciferol.” Louis looks at her blankly. “You’re not allergic to the vitamin, exactly, so I need a metabolically stable cognate of the transient photoproduct, which is…” Louis frowns, starts to speak.
“It doesn’t even matter.” Creighton puts her hand on his cheek, then rapidly moves it to his shoulder. “I think I have it: a way to get us out of here safely, get Macky a scapegoat, and rein in our Amazons’ excesses.” She tosses her hair back, shuddering off the last shreds of faux-subservience, and they step back inside.
It’s absolutely drenched in blood, and the women are prancing around the mens’ slumped bodies. Upon a second perusal, one of them is alive - just passed out. “Dancing Queen” is on the stereo.
“It’s an ABBAttoir!” Creighton smirks over her shoulder. If it’s going to go badly, she thinks, at least I’ll end on a decent pun. She takes a deep breath, and wrenches the volume knob to zero. The sapphic vampire cult whips ‘round as one. The silence is sudden and absolute.
“What is the human doing?” Fiona screeches, and makes a half-lunge towards Creighton, but a single eyebrow-crook from Louis stops her in her tracks. Creighton’s unwillingly impressed.
“I have perhaps not been entirely honest with you,” Creighton says, voice surprisingly steady. “I am not Louis’ pet, but neither do I wish to harm you.” A few vampires snicker at the idea. “I can’t say how I know, but the cops are looking into the CFO carnage.”
“We’ll kill the cops too! Male piggies are still men!” a vampiress with blonde dreadlocks and cut-glass triceps rises.
“A) you can’t kill the entire NYPD,” Creighton rolls her eyes. “B) this is the twenty-first century. There are women on the force now.”
“Like Olivia Benson,” the new-turned vampire offers dreamily.
“Look,” Creighton says, summoning all of the essays she’s read on hostage negotiation. “I understand why you feel like you want to avenge yourselves. If I had fabulous fangs like you do, I’d want to rip the jugular out of the douche who roofie’d me the other night. I just think there might be a better way to go about this.” The vampires look cautiously interested. Creighton tugs the neckline of her dress down a little bit, just in case.
“What?” Fiona’d definitely noticed the tug.
“You can hypnotize people, right?” She waits for a few nods. “And it eventually wears off?” More heads bob. “So tell them they desperately want to quit their jobs and go work at a non-profit. Hell, if they’re particularly vile, tell them to sell all of their assets and become a dishwasher at McMurdo Station in Antarctica.” The vampires, especially the newer ones, are starting to smile. “They value their status more than their lives - they’d probably like to think they went out at the hands of an insatiable orgy of beautiful women.”
“I can see your point,” Fiona purrs, coming over to stroke Creighton’s hair, “but what about the Gardaí?” Creighton’s eyes go heavy-lidded and she looks lazily up into Fiona’s blue gaze.
“All of the men here tonight, they’ve done terrible things to women?” Fiona nods. “You’ve still got one of ‘em alive, haven’t you?” She nods again. “Here’s how it’s going to work: you’ll convince him that he’s a closeted bisexual and has read Bret Easton Ellis novels one too many times - not too much of a stretch there, should be easy to implant - and he’s gone full American Psycho. But here’s the catch: tell him that he’s done it on other I-bankers. And now his investments are going to shit, the guilt is too much, and he has to go down to the precinct and confess.” Fiona draws back, draws lips over glistening teeth.
“I like it, lass.”
“Only one other thing-” Fiona’s eyes Doppler-shift away into red. “-tell him that he can only confess to Detective Macky Humboldt.” Fiona smiles.
“Is the detective your boyfriend? That’s sweet. Ah, but does Louis know?”
__
Creighton’s back in the guest bedroom, and back in Valenciennes lace.
“May I get you anything else? Warm milk? A glass of port? A nibble?” Louis looks earnestly concerned despite the double entendre, and she blushes despite herself, pulling the neckline snug.
“No,” cuddling against pillows.
“Do not quiet yourself around me, mon trésor. Do not look away. I know you had to pretended, earlier, when I… but it was necessary. I…”
“To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend,” Creighton whispers, eyelids dragging down, fingers slackening at her collar. Louis knows this time that it’s Derrida, but does not speak, or challenge, only gently closes the door.
An Interview with The Laughing Cow
Spokesmodel Chroncle: Bonjour! Bienvenue!
The Laughing Cow: *Nods*
SMC: Thank you for joining us today.
TLC:*Shrugs*
SMC: So I checked with your agent this time, you are Thérese?
TLC: Oui. As if it matters.
SMC: Ha ha, you mean, like, a cheese by any other name?
TLC: I mean I am simply a cog in the innards of a soulless organization, a mask it puts on to hide the fact that it is already dead.
SMC: It’s a lovely mask. Very… cheery!
TLC: *Looks stonily at interviewer, unsmiling*
SMC: Is this a joke? You’re putting me on, aren’t you?
TLC: I find nothing amusing.
SMC: About this?
TLC: About anything.
SMC: But you’re The Laughing Cow!
TLC: La vache qui rit? Ha. La vache qui dit: one laughs only to keep from crying, a hoarse bark into the void that is sometimes mistaken for contentment.
SMC: Is this a new thing for you?
TLC: When I was young I was possessed by a certain reckless joy, but it faded, as do all things, leaving only a faint scar and a unrealized longing for the infinite.
SMC: I’m sorry.
TLC: I am not. If lucidity is a wound, at least I am awake.
SMC: Do you get nothing from being the face of an international brand?
TLC: “The eyes alone are still capable of uttering a cry.” René Char.
SMC: But you wear cheese earrings.
TLC: Do the baubles on a Christmas tree restore it to the forest? Or just silently attend its death?
SMC: Oh-kay. If we’re being, uh, bracing, what would you like to say about your company that they might not necessarily agree with?
TLC: My image is being co-opted to peddle thirty-five calorie cheese. That is what we have become. When I first gave of my milk, even to look at an Epoisses from the corner of the eye was thirty-five calories.
SMC: So you don’t agree with the diet culture.
TLC: We eat so that we might live, so that we might shit and then die. “If you want to live, kill. Kill so that you can be free, or eat, or shit.” Blaise Cendrars’ Moravagine. Would you kill in order to unwrap the foil from a neutered wedge of garlic & herb paste?
SMC: This is not going quite … You obviously like reading! What character from literature or history would you say you identify with? I bet it’s Eeyore.
TLC: Qui est “Eeyore”?
SMC: The donkey? From Pooh? You know, “I’m so depressed”?
TLC: Pah. Depression is to chew the thistle despite oneself; I take it into my mouth willingly.
SMC: Ferdinand the Bull?
TLC: Empty-headed pacifist. If I identify with any character from literature, it is only in that they too have lost their agency and exist at the whim of a man who by his nature can only be cruel.
SMC: I’m pretty much, just - god, can you leave us with a parting thought?
TLC: If you’ll allow me to paraphrase from Maldoror, “I am the daughter of a bull and a cow, from what I have been told. This astonishes me… I believed I was something more.”
SMC: You know, I have had a lot of interviews that went a bit wrong, but this really takes the cake.
TLC: The sooner you accept the fact that each endeavor will be more devastating than the last, the sooner you can lapse into your disappointed sleep. *Laughs bitterly*
SMC: There! You laughed! I heard it! The Actually Fucking Laughing Cow, everybody!
TLC: *Fixes her gaze upon the camera, eyes as bleak as agates, absorbing all light, giving up nothing*
SMC: Until next time!
