Most people my age remember where they were when it happened. I was old enough to remember it being serious, but just young enough to kinda not care, really. This is what I was doing: the television was on in the background and I was on the family computer. He burned his house down. He burned His house down, then my only friend got sent away. He’s not here anymore. He left me his Final Fantasy game in the Playstation. It’s fucking tragic that the prettiest blond boys don’t talk much. You’d think all these characters would have something meaningful to say. Maybe silent protagonists know they’re not allowed that privilege. Eventually I started giving them my own voice after I went to bed. I needed to tell stories to fall asleep, to maintain, always keep whatever He left in me from bubbling over to the surface. That’s the stage I’d set up for myself, when I glanced from the corner of my eye, to the television, to cathode ray tubes shooting me with The Vision. Two screens, two worlds, always in pairs, merged into one: two towers colliding with two shirtless boys hot for each other, with nothing to say to each other. It got me really hard. I hated it.