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about why you’re depressed. So let’s sum up, shall we? You’re an ignorant and depressing person and you express your feelings through the only outlet you know. Literary analysis.” He peels away a strand of his hair that attached to his lips. “You’re wondering why your bosses would want your students to be depressed.”
    I’m wondering why the hell I can’t even hope this is a dream.
    “I’ll tell you why, Bernard. The why is that the school is a business. A business with ties to various corporate entities, including the pharmies. Pharmaceutical companies. For every student who’s diagnosed with depression, the school receives a check in the mail. Because, as you probably already know, when a school psychiatrist diagnoses a student as depressed, the school requires that student to pop pills. Otherwise, said student is kicked out of school. And parents tend not to smile on that sort of thing.” He pats the spot where I hope my arm is, but I can’t feel him or my arm. “Don’t blame yourself, Bernard. At least, not entirely yourself. These systems have a tendency of attacking their intended victims on various fronts. You may bum out your students, but the school food, for instance, is also laced with chemicals that give rise to gloomy thoughts. This is all hush-hush, of course, but we have insiders everywhere. And don’t think that what’s going on in the school system is some fluke in an otherwise pic-perfect society. This is a microcosm we’re talking about, folks.” He sounds like the same old Jack again, telling Tour Group Three about the newest attraction. “In a society motivated by money, the various systems within that society are used, rather ingeniously, to increase profit by fucking people over in every conceivable method possible. The media convinces you folks that you’re not being fucked over, and governments suppress said fucked-over folks if they’re fucked to the limit. Because people fucked to limit often attempt to rectify these fucked-up things, which would be, above all, bad for business.” He whirls his arm and checks a watch that I can’t see. “Well, it’s about that time.” He reaches in a coat pocket and pulls out a needle. “When you see her, give her a little message for me, will you? Tell her, ‘Fuck you, bitch.’ She’ll know what I mean.”
    And he injects me.
    Now I feel worse than ill.
    That’s the trouble with betrayal.
    By the time you know you’re in trouble, there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Except, of course, get over it.
    I don’t.

Part 6
    If Frankenstein used liquid to animate his monster, it would be this liquid. The neon green squirts through the tubes, from the backpack on my back to veins in my arms. And I’m wandering through a forest in moonlight. But I’m not wandering, am I? My body plunges forward with the confidence of a wild animal.
    I tell myself to stop walking.
    But I continue.
    What I’m experiencing is either the best kind of instinct or the worst kind of helplessness. Which is the lesser of two horrors, I don’t know.
    The forest floor trembles before me. And when I step forward, because I must step forward, hands erupt from of this shaky patch. Hands of bone and tattered flesh. Hands unable to wear wedding rings. With every pop of earth, a scream ricochets in my skull, unable to find an exit. I scream inside, because the dead have rotten genitalia and rotten minds, so what else could they want but to devour me?
    After the hands subside, the forest explodes in white light. An instant later, I’m looking up at the largest thing I’ve ever seen. Nihilistic terror grips me, but not hard enough to keep me from moving. This thing, it’s alive. It’s blubber and tentacles and eyes, and this Lovecraftian beast doesn’t give a shit about me, and it’ll never give a shit about me. I could fight it. I could beg for mercy. I could even save its life or fall in love with it, and it would never for a moment acknowledge my