Hello to all of you beautiful and handsome Charley Paxos fans,

Quick update: I live in a shelter made of tarps now. More on that coming soon. Additionally, I’m now in the developmental edit stage of my first novel: Teenage Totalitarian-Resistance Movement from Outer Space. I hope to announce its release date here before long. I also have a few short stories I’m working to get published in some high-profile science fiction and fantasy magazines (so I can’t publish them here, at least not yet) and I have several other related projects coming together that I hope to make available soon. But for now… I recently attempted a “flash fiction,” and I failed; it’s just a little too long. Rather than edit it down for submission, I’m publishing it here. I hope it brings you divine transcendence, if that’s not asking too much.

         A lot of people die every year at the Bezos Amusement Pier. So many, in fact, the board of directors posts a chart of the death toll outside of their office, a colored bar graph, a breakdown of deaths by month. During the summer months, there’s a big spike, as you might expect, making the whole of the chart, all three years since the Pier’s inception, a series of gentle, sweeping curves. It looks like a rollercoaster. Bezos flys in weekly to coordinate with the legal team. I’m told he loves to look at that chart. But only twenty people died last month, which fucked up the chart’s rollercoaster aesthetic. Bezos was not happy.
          On average, there are 1.7 deaths a day on the Pier. They’re mostly head injuries—guests are always taking fatal blows to the head when cars from the Centrifugal or the Helter-Skelter dip into the passing crowds—and gorings—safety harnesses are always snapping, on the Tentacle, or on the Gravitron, sending guests flying into the gears of one ride or another, or falling to their deaths in the surrounding ocean, the euphemistic salt bath, where twisted scraps of metal are piled up from the ocean floor to a depth just inches below the surface, creating an artificial reef, now home to a previously unknown and fiercely aggressive species of barracuda, the Bezocuda. There are also a ton of deaths by drowning—we have many new water rides—and deaths by electrocution, and deaths by suffocation, and deaths by fire—at least once a year, one of our haunted attractions will burn down, killing everyone inside, mothers and fathers and children all burned alive. No one ever thinks they’ll die from fire on a pier in the ocean, surrounded by water, but it happens all the time, and Bezos delights in it. The more horrifying the death, the more his eyes sparkle, the sick son of a bitch.
          “Forty-three deaths and zero compensatory damages paid in the month of February,” said our Chief Legal Officer.
          Everyone applauded, except for Bezos. “Speed it up, Elliott,” he said.
         “Forty-seven deaths and zero compensatory damages paid in the month of March,” said our Chief Legal Officer.
         Everyone applauded. Bezos just looked bored.
         “Fifty-three deaths in the month of April,” said our Chief Legal Officer, “and only $25 paid in compensatory damages.”
         As we applauded, Bezos turned red. He slammed his fist down on the boardroom table. “Zero!” he shouted. “Zero!” He punched the lawyer seated beside him, one of the new guys, punched him right in the mouth, knocking him to the floor. “Zero, goddammit!”
         Our Chief Legal Officer froze. The color left his face.
         “Zero, Elliott!” shouted Bezos. “What am I paying you clowns for?”
         “It wasn’t my fault, sir.”
         Bezos stood. His manner was threatening.
         “Please don’t hurt me,” said our Chief Legal Officer, pleading and pathetic.
         Bezos readied to charge.
         “It was a gift card,” I shouted, fearful for our Chief Legal Officer. “It was a $25 gift card to The Olive Garden.”
         Bezos turned to face me. His eyes dilated and the whites disappeared, displaced by the darkness of his pupils. I’m a dead man! I felt the cold of his stare on me and I shivered. “It wasn’t purchased with company funds,” I cried. “It came out of my own wallet. I gave blood. The blood donation center has a rewards program, but their rewards are all shit. I would have picked the Prime gift card, but I didn’t know Prime and Amazon were the same thing. I buy stuff on Amazon all the time. I don’t even like The Olive Garden. Their food is disgusting.”
         Bezos’s cold, dark stare was unflinching. My anxiety grew. Sweet Saint Lucifer of Cagliari, don’t let him throw me in the ocean! I was rambling now.
         “I give blood because my iron is too high. It’s a common problem with men over fifty. Iron overload can cause chronic inflammation, and liver damage, and heart problems, and diabetes.” If only he would blink! “The list of negative health consequences goes on and on, but donating blood is an easy fix. It reduces iron levels in the body. I donate every six months to keep my iron down.”
         Bezos’s gaze was like a laser from a sniper’s rifle. I could feel it on me, that infamous Bezos stare. Overwhelmed with fear and panic, I cried out, “Why didn’t I just pick the Buffalo Wild Wings gift card?”
The whites returned to Bezos’s eyes. I had said the magic words: Buffalo Wild Wings.

         Bezos took an interest in me. He put his arm around me. He said we were going to be friends. He offered me investment tips, sailing tips, and tips to improve my putt. He put me in a headlock and gave me a noogie. He wanted to know all about me, my education, my five year plan, the health of my prostate, and before I knew it, we were on his jet, on our way to Toledo, home of the original Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant. At least there’s no ocean in Ohio.
         “What’s round in the middle and high on both ends?” said Bezos.
         My nerves were too frayed to solve riddles. I gave up.
         Bezos pointed to himself, then he put a glass pipe to his mouth and lit up.
         “What are you smoking, Mr. Bezos? Is that some kind of new cigar? Some new, sophisticated nicotine delivery system? Is it a nootropic drug for cognitive enhancement? Do I smell cloves? Is that a clove and tobacco mix?”
         Bezos blew smoke in my face. “Bath salts,” he said, and passed me his pipe.
         I declined politely, but Bezos would not take no for an answer. He forced his pipe to my lips. When we arrived at the Buffalo Wild Wings in Toledo, I was out of my mind. I was hearing things all around me, like gunshots and howler monkeys. I was seeing things too. I saw my beloved third-grade homeroom teacher, Ms. LeBlanc, dead on the floor beside the crane machine, her head opened like she had been struck from above by a car from the Centrifugal or the Helter-Skelter. I screamed at the child playing the crane machine.
         “Show some fucking respect!”
         The child ran away crying.
         After we ordered, Bezos confronted me. “So why’d you do it?” he said.
         “What did I do?” I was wringing my hands, ready to pop.
         “The gift card to The Olive Garden, why’d you do it?”
         I burst into tears. “I had to give the lady something. She lost all three of her children that day.”
         Bezos chuckled.
         “One drowned in the Lazy River. Another took a salt bath, thrown from the Cyclone Tower and into the ocean, then pulled under by a barracuda.”
         “Bezocuda,” Bezos corrected.
         “And her last child, the youngest and most vulnerable of them all—the mother’s favorite, she confided to me, a child of extraordinary intellectual power, destined, according to her, to mature into an extremely wealthy lawyer, or venture capitalist, or franchise restaurant owner, able to lift the rest of the family out of poverty—that child, Mr. Bezos, was killed in a gang-related knife fight in the Bezos Amusement Pier daycare center.”
         Bezos looked back over his shoulder toward the kitchens.
         “I knew she would see no compensation. I work on the legal team that makes sure that no one ever receives any compensation, ever.” I sobbed uncontrollably. “A $25 gift card to The Olive Garden was the least I could do.”
         Our beers arrived. Bezos chugged as I slid from the booth. I sank into the carpet, that salty, disgusting Buffalo Wild Wings carpet, pulled under, to my death, by some creation or another.