saddest vacant lot in all the world

               The Clint-shaped hole in Ethan’s heart has been filled with a highly developed interest in a grey monoculture: an autocratic worldview where the pluralities of good versus evil have been stripped away to protagonist versus antagonist, where the structure of something is the ultimate truth and the very implication of an objective morality is devil-speak, whereupon such devil-speak causes him to recoil, shuffle through his notes to refute scripture that no one cited, and smile self-assuredly. But at this very moment, he makes an exodus from Traverse City, forsaken and malignant of heart, intent on doing harm unto Ian as a well-measured act of retribution that he sees now is far overdue.  To fund the trip, he had to pawn off the collectibles that were once to furnish the shag shack, which had become painful to look at in recent months.  The Gears of War Lancer was the most hurtsome. . . . “Dude, is that what I think it i...

               It is late, not so late that it’s early, but to be specific, it is just past midnight, and held in front of Ethan is a heavily marked-up and thumbed-through printout of Engel v. Vitale.  He’d been studying it relentlessly like some sort of manic gambler, scanning over a losing scratch ticket trying to square the circle and will the numbers into a winning alignment, but so far, he had no luck, and there’s been no luck for a while now. There had been an incident during movie night a number of weeks back.  As some sort of symbolic gesture, Ethan had begun to quietly boycott the Discord server until late one evening, when he gave it the dreaded French exit altogether.  October had come and gone before anyone had noticed his departure, and when someone did, theories were debated for all of an hour before it slipped from the server zeitgeist; there were far more important things to tend to, for instance, the upcoming 2...

  Everyone in town knows Ian, they recognize him from his pleasant demeanor and chunky, tree trunk legs, and they all know he likes a good tubby on account of what he tells everyone when he gets the chance to. "Hey," Ian says, "I like a good tubby, but not all the time.  You see, I really like letting the water rinse over me in the shower; it's sort of the best of both worlds.  I can play pretend and act out gunfights I'll never be in from the safety of the bathroom.  I use the shampoo bubbles as entry and exit wounds when I'm getting shot up." "Wow, aren't you just so clever," the Indian shopkeeper says, "That's so clever!" "Yeah, it is, isn't it?" "Your total is $5.30," the Indian shopkeeper says. "I like baths a lot, though, but I always feel awkward when I'm done." "That's just great." "Yeah, because there's like the sound of the water drainin...