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Please Be Careful
He may be poisonous, but he's a damn handsome toxin.
The moment he enters, the situation is transformed: smiles, laughter, complete freedom of being. You feel it. Everyone feels it. And doesn't it feel grand?
He's the glue holding the social gathering so tightly together—literally wrapping his numbing arms and fuzzy fingertips around the body and mind of every guest until hands breasts lips legs thoughts judgments plans are all smushed one into the other.
A big happy mess.
A regrettable collaboration of bad decisions and poor self control.
Those who choose to avoid him are the wise, but they won't know it for years. Right now wisdom is a shadow outside on the lawn, a wisp of a cloud, a refusal. Wisdom is something far-off, foreign, and unattainable: liberation from the scruples of acceptance and too much fun.
He's blocking wisdom's path. Like a bully. Palm open to the heavens, waiting with a patient grin to create a fist pregnant with lunch money.
But you don't care about any of that, do you? You're more interested in enjoying yourself, perhaps at the expense of others, but who's really paying attention....
Forget the fact that those who know you're with him are terrified. Forget the fact that they're having trouble sleeping tonight—he who can bottle worry and sell it as an energy drink will be far too prosperous. Forget the fact that you're currently drawing lines of salty tears down their caring faces, literally tugging and pulling at each individual tear until it threads its way painfully through the duct to roll down a soggy cheek. Forget the fact that he represents life and death, and forget the fact that at any second, he could squeeze you just hard enough to extinguish you, to pop you like a bubble or crush you like an ant under a tennis shoe—with the metallic shrieking of a car being torn in two, with the painful echo of one simple misstep, with the acrid taste of vomit and the horrifying tunnel of light through the darkness—and you're gone.
Forget all of that. Because tonight is about FUN.
And if you're having fun, you’d better make it one hell of a time. Because tomorrow, when your bed is a coffin and your family's a wreck, it all has to be worth it. (Somehow, it never really is.)
He won't come to your funeral because he won't be upset that you're gone. He'll just continue killing—no one is brave enough to stop him. He's a murderer, vindicated and proud, waiting quietly for his next victim.
You're not invincible. Live your life the right way; let us sleep at night.
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