STOP BRINGING ME DEAD SQUIRRELS, YOU AREN'T MY DOG.

     I'm a sociopath! Antisocial. Personality. Disorder.

     Antisocial like anti-matter, like anti-Christ, like anti-YOU.

     Personality like a mask, a mask over a mask over a mask until there’s nothing under it but teeth.

     Disorder like a deck of cards scattered on the floor, like your heart on my kitchen table, like a dog dragging a dead thing through the hall. Disordered dischord deriving from deviated devotion. Dissected, disemboweled, delightful.

     People call me hot.

     HOT!

     As if thermodynamics has anything to do with it.

     Really, I just don’t care enough to waste words on weather-talk or emotional weather-patterns. Apparently, when you're quiet, people project onto you like a blank screen. Desire, fear, lust, love, longing, laundry lists of needs I'll never meet.

     Stillness = mystery = power = sex appeal. The holy equation of the deeply misread. An algebra of lust where my lack becomes your longing!

     And the irony! You fall in love with the way I don’t fall in love with you.

     “Pet me, feed me, validate me!” And I do. Until I don’t.

     But I’ll say it louder, LOUDER, LOUDEST: I am selfish. I am self-centered. I am SELF, SELF, SELF until the mirror cracks, until even the word self dissolves into static and spit and meaningless syllables.

     And they STILL call me hot. STILL fall at my feet, licking, licking, licking, tails wagging, mouths foaming, as if worship is a reflex.

     Because deep down, EVERYONE wants a god or a devil to worship. And some of you are so pathetic, so hollow, that you’ll crown the nearest warm body and call it holy. False idols with blood under their fingernails.

     False idols like a maggot-fucking, rot-licking, soiled-food-eating, abuser. Odd little altar you’ve built here, isn’t it?

     This isn’t me bragging, AT ALL. I find it irritating. Exhausting. A chore. How many times do I have to scream, kick, claw, BITE, to make a human go away? To make them STOP scratching at the door?

     Too many.

     Always too many.

     There’s never enough distance between me and the endless mewling need of others. And even when they run, they always come crawling back. Always. ALWAYS. ALWAYS.

     OBNOXIOUS.