This is not where good people meet good people. Summer suckz. When I was younger, I thought it made me sound mature to admit I’d outgrown this or that. But in sleep — only when I dream — those fantasies ram themselves back in. That night I dream about The Catboy posting on an imageboard: I see him in a picture, an anonymous JPG uploaded and compressed and re-uploaded hundreds of times over. His ears are pink, elf-esque, distinct from his pink tail and paws. The bitrot’s gone all to his head. Can’t label him a creature that doesn’t exist. The Catboy. An amorphous, intangible changeling adolescent un-child. Somewhere, I read that the bigger a character’s eyes are, the more innocent they seem. In the case of mascots, the absence of a mouth indicates a subliminal desire to be projected on. Hello Kitty has nothing interesting to say. If you are cute and mute, no one will ever hurt you. But The Catboy is confrontational, uncanny; his eyes are sweet but his fangs are too sharp. His tail twitches as he approaches me. This amalgamation introduces himself as Hypnagogia. The name creeps into my brain-folds. Finally, he speaks: