What do you do when you're scared? What do you feel when you're anxious? What happens when you are in danger? Hah, what a dumb, feckin' useless question. What's the point in asking? You know what you would do, but you would never answer. Scratch, claw, kill, murder! It's the things that keep you human - mistakes!

Mistakes are just what I need, but it ain't what I desire. Popping the dose into my mouth, I rest upon the couch-bed dumb enough to find its way into this dump of a house. The residue upon its limbs remind me of times better than those which fall upon me now. The personality of the week barks, "I ask you, what of the past? The future is where one's head should be. So stay upon it. Look forward, and overcome!"

What lies told by the media… they believe they understand my situation? Oh how they love to use the word. "The Social Market situation, the Mancal issue, the Leap predicament." The day I get to see such a verbose reporter in person I'll make sure that it doesn't happen twice. They only understand what's happening to them, not to us. That's how you should think, right? Us and feckin' them. What a twist! Another day watching tele and it's THEM I need to be worryin' about? Who woulda guessed. Guess I'll take care of THEM then, instead of US, since you won't!

"GaH! Shit it ALL."

The remote in my hand, gone. At the tele, bouncing to the ground, now. Carbon glass can get pretty strong after all, but it's worth shit. It's always been gold, always will be. Know what I saw in the news? A man killed. Killed for gold.

"As if I care! Hah! I can do him one better any day."

The world's end is near, I can feel it. Felt it since I be born, I tell you. It's here, now.

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I pick up the remote after two failed attempts to reach for it. My hand is shaking. The drugs are working a little too well…

***

Popcorn: The ceiling variety. A wonderful taste of tar. Most of all, the ringing. Oh, the ringing. What thrills!

***

Popcorn: The ceiling variety. A wonderful ringing, what thrills! Tar. Tar?

***

Pop: tar ringing! Thrills from ringing. Tar everywhere. Coughing.

I feel again. It stopped. Damnit, really thought you got me that time, hah! If druggy ain't my future, I don't know what is, so just -

"GIVE IT TO ME!"

My throat closes from the residual tar. I claw at my throat, at my shirt, at the ground beneath me. My fingernails still never hurt. I pound and pound, causing a concert of jingling nonsense about the room. My fists are rejuvenated already, freshly manufactured blood flowing through them now. The floor shines is as if just born… After all, carbon glass can get pretty strong.

I hate my perfect nails. I hate my perfect fists. I hate my perfect tele. Most of all I hate the stainless, perfect, pristine fucking floor. I lay back, the trash around me swaddling me in a stained cocoon. A beautiful warmth of mistakes. I spread it across the floor to hide the memory… hide the pain.

I find the remote amid the trash, turning it over in my hand. Nice. It feels good. I look at it, really look at it, for the first time in weeks. A smooth, sheen finish along the cylindrical mass, with a wood battery slot. At the rear end, a simple lever to flip the channel, and a single button front and center for the consumer's pleasure. The gold metalwork of the thing, glinting in the stark lamplight, gives solace. I move my hand around it in hypnotic motion, closing my eyes. Stars, mandalas, some god… They're all under those heavy eyelids, but this remote, this remote holds the future those reporters spoke of.

I sit back down, resting my weary head on my favorite stain. The stain of my future. I aim the remote to the future it tells me. The future I don't desire, but what the tele has told me I need.

I click the channel, and disappear.