[Ultra Peanut]

Pork-chop gets me a job at the Honker burger, and then he’s pushing a gun in my mouth, telling me the first step to eternal life is that you have to die. For a long time, Pork-chop and I were best friends. People were always asking me about my dog.

The gun presses harder into the roof of my mouth, wet now from the stew of saliva and sweat leaking around in my orifice. “Arf arf arf, arf arf arf.” he hisses.

“No Pork-chop,” I say, “You’re thinking of vampires.” The words are dulled into nothingness by the gun.

As Pork-chop removes the barrel, I realize that all of this - the Honker burger, Mr. Dink, the revolution - has something to do with a girl named Patty Mayonnaise.

Patty. I’d chased that bitch since junior high, running after her on a mix of testosterone and pure stupidity. It took some changes for me to realize that nirvana didn’t sprawl shining between her legs. It took Pork-chop.

Pork-chop had been my dog as long as I could remember. Most of the time, he was inoffensive. Cute even, with his barely audible barks and strangely anthropomorphic characterization. Things changed when I got to high school. Pork-chop changed.

I was scrawling in my journal that night. I don’t remember what about, but I’m sure it was just more bitching about Patty. Those days seem far off now, from this cluttered principal’s office. Everything in life looks distant from atop 5 barrels of timer set nitro-glycerin.

Pork-chop seemed strangely quiet sophomore year. Worse, he seemed uninterested in my piddling personal problems. He was all I had. The silence broke that night I was writing in my journal. As I’d done for what seemed like a lifetime, I reached for the light switch. A small gray hand intercepted my arm.

“What is it Pork-chop?”

“Arf Arf Arf Ar Arf Ar Ar Arf Ar Arf Arf” he asked.

“What?”

“Arf Arf Arf Ar Arf Ar Ar Arf Ar Arf Arf.” he repeated.

“What, why?”

“Arf Arf Arf Ar A Arf?”

“No, but that’s a good thing.”

“Arf, arf. Arf Arf Arf Arf Arf Arf-arf ar Arf Arf Ar Arf?”

“Jesus, man, I don’t know.” I put the journal down.

“Arf Arf Ar, Arf Arf Arf Arf Ar Arf.”

So I did it. I hit him as hard as I could. Pork-chop’s tiny frame flew across the room, smashing into my trophy case. Grade school victories were stained by his dark red doggie blood.

“Jesus, Pork-chop, I’m sorry...”

He just growled something approving, and charged back at me.

That was my first real fight. I got deep bruises that night. Cuts so severe that they bled real blood. These were not the pin pricks of childhood. This was something new. Something I wanted more of.

Little did I know that It’d leave me here. In Mr. Bone's abandoned office, a gun violating my mouth, while the grimy timer in the basement counts down from sixteen hours. Then this whole school will be so much undifferentiated rubble. This second floor will just be a point in space. An invisible dot in the air, where my journal really ends.