Suddenly I wasn’t in the apartment anymore, I was outside.

It was the middle of the night, the all the street lights looked yellow. Cigarettes swallowed the air. Stores sold emotional problems; with logos designed for shoving graphic respect. Inevitable graffiti creeped from the shadows. There, the homeless man rested, as he continued to be somebody. His fit in universe. People would sometimes drop change his way. On street, the man drops nothing.

I realized that if you stare long enough at the crowd and the traffic, you begin to notice the pattern. It all looks like chaotic movement at first, but actually there's a rhyme to the whole thing, a choreography like in one of those old Hollywood musicals my mom loved.

What if the principle extended beyond the city? Why wouldn't it? Maybe if you zoomed out far enough, you'll see the pattern of the whole fucking planet. If you just stared at it long enough, it'll make itself apparent, trust me.

No, I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about either, but at the time, I swear I did.

I was sitting on a bench watching the show. I saw a rabbit. The man in the rabbit suit. A cheap Walmart bunny costume, with shaggy fur and a plastic mask. .He was on the sidewalk across the street, staring right at me. He was standing still. Everybody else moved around him, like water around a buoy.

I ran off the bench and dashed towards the fucker. I nearly got run over by a car, but I didn't care.

"What the hell is going on?" I said.

Some lady in a floral dress stopped to stare at me.

"What's your problem?" I told her. "Can't you see I'm talking to the guy in the rabbit suit?"

She turned around and walked away at a quicker pace.

"You're the only one who can see me, Ward," the white rabbit said, his voice still muffled by his plastic mask. He didn't speak but I understood what he was saying. It was like sometimes I would have thoughts that were from me and sometimes I'd have thoughts that were somewhere else

As he said this, I noticed the other people bending around him, warping like in a fun house mirror. The sound warped as well, words twisted midsentence.

I asked him what was going on. He gently poemed the newspaper. Make it from the bag. I want words. Next article there. The scissors are next to you, where they were conscientiously left. They are infinitely vulgar. Cut your will.

"Alice is down the rabbit hole," he said. “The godless man said the age is worn. The two are night faiths, you can read the middle in between them. We can see their might. The two in me turned it all postmodern; the regulation of night throats!”

"Fuck you and your Disney references!"

"Lewis Carroll was a pedophile, Ward. Alice was one of the young girls he liked to fuck. Did you know that?"

I tried to ignore his babble.

"Why can I still see things? Am I still tripping?"

"You've started a journey, Ward," the man in the bunny suit said. "You've gone to wonderland. But while you were there, a little bit of wonderland has gone into you. Grendel is the dragon of the unconscious, all the monstrous elements of mankind we deny and suppress, he wants to consume existence. Extremism against itself—the crucifixion of power—American ethics—the coercive utopia—American the anointed. But dragons can be slain by knights.”

“I don't know what I'm supposed to do about it. I'm no hero,” I said. "Look. I've had a rough day. I'm really not in the mood for this cryptic bullshit. I don't want to beat the information out of you, and besides, you're probably don't even fucking exist."

"Threats won't work against me, Ward. You'll have to learn more ways than violence. Although the violence will, on occasion, be useful.

“Take the person, who resembles a charming author, through the herd. I had already started the journey. I had taken the elixir—in which order makes a Dadaist—and has put me in touch with the white rabbit.”

"What do you mean I'm going on a journey? What am I supposed to do? Where do I go?"

To kill Grendel, you need to physically go to the flipside. The flipside is—Morphogenesis, an atlas of unnoted lists of vascular plants. The sixty papers in pursuit of muck ranked. A coercive study of the erotic. Anatomy of the family seeds, seeds of fire—The flipside is the side in which the metaphor sees the real and everything that is mere language in our world becomes a cold hard fact. It's heaven, hell and everywhere in between all at once.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Patience, Ward, patience, Harrison said in my memory.

"You were looking for your friend Harrison? He's in a dumpster on 34th street."

A car slowed down and rolled down its window.

"Get a job you fucking junkie!" The driver shouted at me.

I turned around to flip him off. When I turned back, the rabbit was gone.

To do the deed proper I will need—Cacgacosltures—the weapon. Man, to morphogenesis into the power of extremism, the atlas of the asylum of cacgacosltures. The definitive papers of muck.

To get to the flipside I will need the key. A definitive study of the reputed dangers to man. Pursuit itself was the reputed vascular of at least the family of plant and lists of utopias.

After this, I knew what I needed to do.

I stepped of the curbed and disappeared.

\\\*\\\*\\\*\\\*

The first thing I saw, when I woke up, was a blackhole, drawn in marker, on the wall. Text with an arrow pointing to the hole said it was “a portal to Narnia.” Around the hole, drawn with ballpoint by my guess, was a goatse, complete with cock and balls. Above it was written, “Actually, it’s my asshole.”

The way of the throat, the way of the bathroom, I heard my memory say.

The second thing I noticed was that I was in a public bathroom. I was in one of the stalls, siting on the toilet. My pants were pulled up. But they weren’t my pants. They were sweatpants. I hate sweatpants. I had a white T, advertising a youth group called “Extreme Outreach.” Teenagers with an attitude for Christ, said the subtitle. The logo was a blue stickman with outstretched arms that I guess was supposed to look like a cross or something.

It’s man over a stall all, my memory said, coughing.

I stumbled out of the bathroom stall. Everything was grey, grey walls, grey sink and grey floor tile. I made my way out.

The light blinded me at first, but then my eyes adjusted. I was in a Walmart, judging by all the blue and the people who looked like crack addicts. It was so loud, the sound of carts squeaking was deafening. I moved along the wall and fell through the automatic doors.

I nearly got run over by a car as I went into the parking lot. The driver honked at my, so I flipped them the bird. They drove off in a huff.

I looked around. It was sure a Walmart parking lot. But there’s, like, a hundred Walmarts in the city probably and I had no idea where I was.

I looked down. Sidewalk. I followed the sidewalk with my eyes. I saw other stores further down. This Walmart was in a strip mall. That didn’t give me a better idea of where I was, but it was a start at least. I started down the sidewalk.

As I walked, I suddenly remembered Harrison took the drugs with me. But we weren’t together now. We must have gotten separated during the trip. I had no idea where he was now. Fuck.

My train of thought was interrupted when I stepped in some slime. I stepped back and wiped my shoe on the curb. Actually, I was wearing sandals. Again, not mine. The slime was a green viscous substance, like they used to have on nickelodeon. It was dripping down from the roof. I looked up.

The slime was leaking out of a large shape on the roof. It was pulsating, like a jellyfish. It looked like a giant balloon at first, like a parade float. That’s what I thought it was at first. It was white and blue. It’s tentacled appendages swayed in the wind. Nobody else seemed to be able to see it. I saw it look back down at me. Its mouth opened to reveal rows of teeth. I could see it, but it could also see me.

I didn’t have time to scream before the slime enveloped me entirely.

\\\*\\\*\\\*\\\*

“What the fuck? Where am I?”

“I hunger, Ward.”

“Gah! Who’s there?”

“Starving even.”

“Holy shit, are you the jellyfish?”

“Have you brought me something to eat?”

“A big mac with a side of my ass! Listen, can’t you people just leave me alone!”

"Such rage, but no direction. Like a child throwing a temper tantrum."

“I got a lot going on right now, and I mean a lot. I think taking drugs after a psychotic break might of been a bad idea.""

“I’m hungry.”

"Yeah, you mentioned that already. Do crazy people know there going crazy?""

“You know the first religious rites of your primitive forefathers were honoring the animals they hunted. They deified them as spirits and eventually gods. They worshiped what they ate.”

“I mean—uh—I'm still sorting a couple of things out with that but—"

“That is because they couldn’t reconcile the primary horror of existence. The fact that life needs to eat life to survive.”

“What?”

"Life, by its very nature, must eat itself."

“Isn’t there somebody else you could be bothering right now? You’re a big scary monster type. Can’t you find some white knight?”

“You’re the protagonist of this novel, Ward.”

"Yeah, but you sure as shit ain't the villain. I'm not the dragon-slaying type."

“You’re not a hypocrite. Those knights in shining armor spill the blood of my kind and call it a victory. What they do not know is the real beast rest within their own hearts. I've smelled the funeral pyres of women and children burned like garbage. There were no dragons there, only men.”

“Wait, why were you smelling funeral pyres? What the fuck?”

“We’re drawn to each other, Ward.”

“Thanks, but I don’t swing that way. Also, you scare the shit out of me. And not in the sexy kind of way.”

“You’re aware of the monster inside of you. You don’t keep it in a cage like the others. You let the lion out and use it as a weapon.”

“Who are the others in this scenario? Cause I’m not sure what you are talking about, but if I do then your just wrong. I’m not the only asshole in the world.”

“I still hunger.”

“You keep saying that. Is that another bullshit metaphor? Or are you actually hungry?”

“Can it not be both?”

“I really don’t know what it means. Look, it’s my dream. Maybe I can imagine some McDonalds or something.”

“I hunger for the smell of roses—”

"I don't think they sell that at Mickey-D's. Of course, maybe they changed the menu recently."

“The sound of bullets, the light of the sunset.”

“Okay I know for sure they don’t sell any of that. Maybe at Burger King?”

“The hate that turns brother against brother, the feeling of the sublime at the top of the mountain.”

“You want to—eat shitty free verse poetry?”

“I hunger for being and nothingness, good and evil, all at once.”

“And you’ve lost me again.”

“I hunger for everything, existence itself.”

“Hey—wait—what the fuck? Let—let go of me, meat breath!”

“I want to eat the place from which you came and everything and everyone in it—”

“Putmedownputmedown! Nonono—don’t open your mouth!”

“I want to eat the world."