misery’s Blog

RYJON says goodbye to BRENCER

Jul 8, ‘09 10:01 PM for everyone

Paolo Lorenzana’s ‘Odd’-est interview ever. A horror story.

All the things I probably should have said, a now-dead tone — much more a computer-generated call declared dead by squishy Skype signal — would not permit. Some sense of diplomacy had been lost over Internet telephone space and what was supposed to be light discussion with Panic at the Disco’s mastermind guitarist Ryan Ross on the band’s new release “Pretty. Odd.” — and their August 14 concert at the Araneta Coliseum — turned out to be, well, not just odd but pretty damn off-putting.

Despite the tentative 8AM interview slot a concert promoter had set the night before, I felt I was ready for a standard game of whack-the-conversational-ball-around with any of the band members by the time I’d received a 7AM text message confirming my ring-a-rendezvous with Ross and frontman Brendon Urie in about an hour.

With currently radio-active hit “That Green Gentleman (Things Have Changed”) still reverberating in my head from last night’s last-minute stab at research — illegally downloading both 2005’s “A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out” and Panic’s newer album, mulling over each track ‘til midnight apart from gathering requisite Wiki intel and talking points from interviews past — a cup of black coffee and the questions I’d scrawled down in the process were, I deemed, enough to keep me on a casually conversant plane in sync with Ross and Urie’s late afternoon wind-down in Los Angeles.

At a quarter to eight, I presumed I’d be throwing quips around with Ross and, 15 minutes after, maybe siphoning crazy groupie stories from Urie, who was currently on local airwaves humoring two radio jockeys — uneasy chuckles and all — as they seemed to piss on the obvious (‘Is the song ‘Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off’ taken from the movie ‘Closer?’’). However, as soon as I’d gotten Ross on the line, all that was accomplished in the minute that followed was the communicative equivalent of him catapulting spoons of sour cream at me.

He writes the sins, I report the tragedies

“This is Ryan,” he said, indicating a neutral reception after picking-up after two rings.

“Hi Ryan, this is Paolo from The Philippine Star Supreme” I responded, complying with the promoter’s request to distinguish a major daily in the Philippines from a crap-hurling American tabloid.

“You’re breaking up,” he said after quite a pause, the dead air offset by what sounded like music playing in the background. “You’re Carlo from the…from a newspaper in the Philippines? What do you need at all?”

“Um, yeah,” I said, releasing a slight snicker before repeating my greeting with greater volubility, enunciating each word as clearly as I could. And then, “They said I could call this number now? Is it alright if I ask you a few questions about the new album and your upcoming concert over here?”

“Okay, ask what? Go ahead. Let’s see if this is legit or not — okay, go ahead,” he demanded; his vocal countenance turning gruff and the loathing of his own existence and that of the person he was talking to, apparent.

“Yeah, I was listening to the new album and it reminded me of catching ‘LOVE,’ the Beatles-inspired Cirque du Soleil production, in Vegas,” I explained, connecting the necessary dots from the album’s Abbey Road recording to the band’s having hailed from Las Vegas. “There’s just this whole Beatles influence to it. Did ‘LOVE’ maybe inspire the album in any way?” And after a tension-smothered spell of silence, miscommunication soon resulted in missed communication.

AUDIBLY ANNOYED RYAN: About the Beatles, you’re talking about? (Grunts) What… what is the question?

NOW-AGGRAVATED INTERVIEWER: The album reminded me of catching “LOVE” in Vegas… I was wondering if… (Ryan cuts me off)

NOW-HELL-RAISING RYAN: No, no — don’t tell me about ‘reminded me’… tell me what, what the question is.

HANDS-UP HELPLESS INTERVIEWER: I just wanted to know… what influenced… the subject matter and the vibe?

NOW-SEEMINGLY DELUSIONAL RYAN: There’s no…new, new album for the Beatles! (Degrading chuckle) Thank you. Goodbye.

Still wired from my second cup of coffee, I could imagine a rabidly coked-up pseudo-artist fuming after having just heaved his iPhone at his Filipina housekeeper. What instantly raged in my head were images of bloodshed at the disco: a wrecking mirror ball unceasingly ramming into Ross; or the guitarist hanging by his ever-present scarf from a strobe light fixture; or, in the name of sweet vindication, a legion of obese hipster girls trampling the band, mistaking them for Fall Out Boy (comparisons — even after FOB’s Pete Wentz pulled PATD into his record label via MySpace message — seem to tick Ross off).

It didn’t matter if Ryan Ross was “sick” as the promoter would later inform me (along with the fact that Urie couldn’t be contacted after his radio interview), or if the schmuck was in the middle of an S&M orgy with a couple of groupies he’d picked up in Poughkeepsie. Whether he was making great strides to become a grade-A a-hole these days just so he could gun down a tween fan base that paid more attention to the bat of his lashes rather than to his music, or reap some “rock star” upstart cred by dropping media finesse like his band had pretentiously dropped the already-pretentious exclamation in their name, the questions I’d prepared bore no answers — and the unspoken pact between interviewer and personality became almost mythical.

In about two years of writing, give or take, a hundred profiles, I felt I’d done my pen-ance, shrugging off every snag or surprise in my interaction with certain “names”, from Kristine Hermosa’s off-cam crassness to Wilma Doesnt’s crotch-pat upon introduction. From being self-taught in excavating the interest factor in anybody, quirks and qualities became visible, especially under that interviewer-interviewee agreement that stipulated both party’s needing each other; the latter to command promotion and the former, to literally conquer the idea of a personality.

But here was Ryan Ross incinerating a huge clause in entertainment publicity, repelling followers who’d want to know everything from what brand of guy-liner he uses to what he meant by “It seems the artists today are not what you think” in the ’05-released single “The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage.”

At this point, though, I think I have a pretty good idea of what that meant. And that when you’re a 22 year-old whose alcoholic dad passed a year or two ago, it’s much harder to ride an existential crisis out when you’ve got non-stop touring, TRL fame, and no panic button to press. But I didn’t know Ryan, nor did I know if the new album’s chipper, Beach Boys ‘n’ Beatle-esque departure from the cutesy misery of the Panic’s debut was a means for Ryan, lyricist-composer and silent captain, to deal; or if the guy just thinks all members of the third-world press are complete morons. Who knew? And who can ever truly know “somebody” when the world of local print is rife with half-assed features born from record company-monitored phone calls and the 15 fruitless minutes a writer gets to talk to a diva on her makeup chair? Sure, I wanted Ryan to glean a sense of “otherness,” but what emerged from my non-interview was a rare sense of realness, especially when shooting the s*it with celebrities had already become a tedious, bull-coated routine to me.

If an interview brought me, writer, and, sequentially, you, reader, closer to a personality, then Ryan Ross was able to grab us by our throats and exhibit that closeness over the phone and in less than a minute. And as soon as he put that poor iPhone down, I may have actually become a fan in the process.

I’m so Starving.
I Feel good When its Nine in The Afternoon.
I tuck Fibs into Cookie Jars.
I Never Gave a Damn about The Weather.
I’ll Take a Chance, Take my Shoes of And Dance in The Rain.
I Feed my Jewelry to The Sea.
I Have Met the Day And The Night.
I Leave Walking To The World.
I Dive Off the Deep End of a Tragic Cigarette.
I am Behind the Sea.
I Exaggerate a Memory or Two.
I Hold the World Upon a String.
I wound Relentlessly Around the Words We Used to Sling.
I am Mad as Rabbits.
And I’m shaping Up To Be Pretty. Odd.

~~~ FALL OUT BOY WORDS ~~~

+ Belated: coming or being after the customary, useful, or expected time:

+ Bravado: bragging or boasting

+ Clandestine: characterized by, done in, or executed with secrecy or concealment, esp. for purposes of subversion or deception;

+ Compensate: to counterbalance; offset; be equivalent to

+ Conjugal: Of or relating to marriage or the relationship of spouses.

+ Cynicism: an attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others

+ Digress: To turn aside, especially from the main subject in writing or speaking; stray.

+ Dilate: to make wider or larger; cause to expand

+ Elation: a feeling or state of great joy or pride; exultant gladness; high spirits.

+ Eloquent: having or exercising the power of fluent, forceful, and appropriate speech

+ Grandstanding: to perform to impress an audience

+ Intricate: complex; complicated; hard to understand, work, or make. having many interrelated parts or facets; entangled or involved

+ Kerosene: A thin oil distilled from petroleum or shale oil, used as a fuel for heating and cooking, in lamps, and as a denaturant for alcohol. Also called coal oil, lamp oil.

+ Mausoleum: A large stately tomb or a building housing such a tomb or several tombs.

+ Negates: to make ineffective or invalid; nullify, deny

+ Pixelate: pertaining to a printed image which has been digitized; visible as a pattern of pixels; confused

~~~ PANIC AT THE DISCO WORDS~~~

+ Accentuating: to give emphasis or prominence to or to mark or pronounce with an accent.

+ Affliction: a cause of mental or bodily pain, as sickness, loss, calamity, or persecution.

+ Allegedly: supposed

+ Anesthetic: a drug that causes temporary loss of bodily sensations

+ Asbestos: a fibrous amphibole; used for making fireproof articles; inhaling fibers can cause asbestosis or lung cancer

+ Aubergine: a dark purplish color, eggplant

+ Beckoning: to signal or summon, as by nodding or waving.

+ Belfry: a bell tower; usually stands alone unattached to a building or a room where a bell is rung

+ Cabaret: a restaurant providing food, drink, music, a dance floor, and often a floor show.

+ Camisado: A surprise attack by night.

+ Caricature: to represent or imitate in an exaggerated, distorted manner. can be a picture, description, etc

+ Composure: steadiness of mind under stress

+ Congregation: an assembly of persons brought together for common religious worship

+ Consenting: having given consent; “consenting adults”

+ Constable: an officer of the peace

+ Contradiction: direct opposition between things compared; inconsistency.

+ Contusions: an injury in which the skin is not broken; a bruise.

+ Conventional: according to the accepted standards etc; not outrageous or eccentric

+ Conviction: a fixed or firm belief

+ Daiquiri: a cocktail of rum, lemon or lime juice, and sugar, often with the addition of fruit and ice and mixed in an electric blender

+ Entrants: One that enters, especially one that enters a competition.

+ Entrepreneur: A person who organizes, operates, and assumes the risk for a business venture.

+ Estrogen (can also be spelled as Oestrogen): a general term for female steroid sex hormones that are secreted by the ovary and responsible for typical female sexual characteristics

+ Formaldehyde: a colorless poisonous gas; made by the oxidation of methanol

+ Gurney: a flat, padded table or stretcher with legs and wheels, for transporting patients or bodies.

+ Harlequin: a buffoon.

+ Hospice: a program of medical and emotional care for the terminally ill

+ Indifference: lack of interest or concern

+ Interlude: an intervening episode, period, space, etc.

+ Intimacy:a close, familiar, and usually affectionate or loving personal relationship with another person or group.

+ Linoleum: a kind of floor cloth made by laying hardened linseed oil mixed with ground cork on a canvas backing.

+ Malice: desire to inflict injury, harm, or suffering on another, either because of a hostile impulse or out of deep-seated meanness

+ Martyrdom: death that is imposed because of the person’s adherence of a religious faith or cause or any experience that causes intense suffering

+ Naivete: lack of sophistication or worldliness

+ Nitroglycerin: a heavy yellow poisonous oily explosive liquid obtained by nitrating glycerol; used in making explosives and medically as a vasodilator (trade names Nitrospan and Nitrostat)

+ Orchard: an area of land devoted to the cultivation of fruit or nut trees.

+ Parish: an ecclesiastical district having its own church and member of the clergy.

+ Pas de Cheval: a step in which the dancer hops on one foot and paws the ground with the other.

+ Pews: long bench with backs; used in church by the congregation

+ Picturesque: visually charming or quaint, as if resembling or suitable for a painting

+ Poise: balance and control in bodily movement

+ Proposition: to propose a private bargain to, especially to propose sexual relations with

+ Rationality: the quality or state of being agreeable to reason

+ Reverie: a daydream

+ Rosary: a string of beads used in counting prayers

+ Sensationalist: someone who uses exaggerated or lurid material in order to gain public attention

+ Sermons: a religious discourse delivered as part of a church service.

+ Substandard: failing to meet a standard; below standard.

+ Sugarcanes: a tall tropical southeast Asian grass having thick, solid, tough stems that are a chief commercial source of sugar.

+ Surreptitious: obtained, done, made, etc., by stealth; secret or unauthorized; clandestine: a surreptitious glance.

+ Testosterone: A male sex hormone

+ Therapeutic: of or pertaining to the treating or curing of disease; curative.

+ Weathervanes: a device for indicating wind direction.

+ Webzine: a magazine published on the Internet

Ok, well Fall Out Boy has more pop culture and movie references than big words. Either way, both groups keep you on your toes.

GEORGE RYAN ROSS III

Vital Stats

DOB: August 30, 1986

Place of birth: —-Summerlin, Nevada

Currently resides in: —-Las Vegas, Nevada

Education: —- Bishop Gorman High School, University of Las Vegas (one semester only)

Significant other: Callie Lundin

Family: —-George Ryan Ross II (father). He also has two half-siblings from his mother’s second marriage

Tattoos/piercings and other notable features: —-1 tattoo on each wrist( “Mad as a hatter, Thin as a dime”) and 2 other tattoos on the back of his shoulders(”Q” and “?”)

Trademark look: paisley shirts, (reinvent love) vest, pointed Italian leather shoes, he tends to always look like hes walked out of time machine from the 60’s, amazing scarves which he has perfected the art of tying.

Eye color: honey brown

Height: 5′9″

Nickname(s): RyRy, RyRo, Ross, Rye Bread, Rossicle, Rytoast, DJ Ryan Ross, Ryho,

Hobbies/outside interests: Ballet, Perfecting the art of scarves.

Charities/causes: Hippies Use the Side Door, John Lennon Bus

Biography
Ryan was born George Ryan Ross III in Summerlin, NV on August 30th,1986. Ryan met best friend and fellow bandmate Spencer Smith when Ryan was 6 and Spencer was 5. He wanted a guitar for Christmas when he was 12 years old, and he got it. The same Christmas, Spencer had gotten a drum set. They started their first band, Summer League with then-buddy and former PATD bassist Brent Wilson. Wilson met Brendon Urie when they were both in highschool, and asked him to try out for lead guitar, which he did. Ryan was originally the lead singer of the band, but after hearing Urie’s voice and being impressed, the band unanimously decided to have Urie be the lead singer instead. The band changed their name to Panic! At The Disco once Brendon had joined the band. They dropped Brent Wilson from the band on May 17th, 2007 and he was replaced with current bassist Jon Walker (a longtime friend). Panic! At The Disco’s debut album A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out went double platinum. Ryan has stated in a turn of events that the band has dropped the “!” from their name, and will now be known as Panic At The Disco.

Career Highlights

Background in music: Summer League, Pet Salamander

Instruments played: Guitar, Organ, Accordion, Harmonica, Keyboard, Piano, Bass Guitar, Percussion, Whormonica, Acwhordion, Flesh Kazoo, Soccer Ball,

Preferred gear: Fender (but his favourite guitar is a gibson)

First band/big break: Panic! at the Disco

Other career highlights/lowlights: —-

How he/she joined the band:Founding member

Musical influences:Tom Waits, the Beatles, The Cheeky Girls, The Beach Boys, Wolfmother, and Bob Dylan.

Best known for… His many talents, song-writing

Awards: Panic! at the Disco won Video Of The Year in 2006 at the VMAs

Key milestones: —-

[Date]:

[Date]:

[Date]:

Upcoming plans: Reading & Leeds Festival

Side projects: From September of 2005 to May of 2008 Ryan Ross has also worked as a private hooker.

Official Sites

• www.panicatthedisco.com

Contact this artist: blinkexists182@hotmail.com

Trivia

• He’s an atheist
• His favorite cookies are Snickerdoodles and Oatmeal Raisin
• Used to do his own make-up
  
• Has a dog named Hobo which he bought in 2007
• Met Spencer Smith when he was 6 years old
• Gets his fabulous scarves from Frodo Baggins, who is in fact- his homeboy.

has

THE BOY WITH THORNS IN ITS SIDE

by Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz

When I was younger I had a reoccurring nightmare about a far off place full of dark things. I remembered forcing my eyes open to escape it. As the years passed, the images began to fade and I had the dream less and less. It’s like part of your imagination being overactive and never sleeping. As I’ve grown older I’ve found myself thinking of it more fondly, trying to remember how these scenes played in my mind and inventing new ones. Using some of the best underground artists I have ever met (whose work continually takes my breath away), I hope to explain myself. Here they take the form of criminal sketch artists, and have made what amounts to drawings of suspects. This is how they looked to the best of my memory. I am just a cartographer. At best this is a map that will get you back to this world, and at worst this is me spilling the best secret I ever had. This dream used to make me afraid to sleep. I remember begging my Mom for half hour increments to put off the inevitable, the unavoidable. I used to think of every happy thought in my head before I went to sleep in a desperate effort to escape it. And then one day it just went away. This is me at my most honest. My most naked. I think somewhere in everyone is The Boy. No one wants to be what they are. This is cliche and trite, but it is mine. Don’t sleep. This story is a complete waste of the eyesight you will lost reading it. When you are done you’ll ask yourself what the point was. There isn’t one. Every life has a lull in it that gets so bad and seems so long that you can’t remember when or why it started. It skips around and probably isn’t worth it but to me it reads like the bible. This is the story of a lull…..read it like a crime scene report or an autopsy, because that’s all it ever was. This is not the kind of boy who deserves a story. He is not the kind of boy that deserves to be remembered. He is not the kind of boy who has a name. Or at least not one that he can remember. Neither did his mother or father… they barely remembered he was alive. He is the kind of kid that just gets by. He is the kind of kid who you forget about as soon as you meet him. He is the B-side to your hit single. He is the crust on the bread, the ash on the cigarette. He is every face you have ever forgotten (he is us). The kids at his school would have hated him if they had even noticed his existence. When you’re always alone it feels strange when you are together with anyone. He gets up every morning with the same stupid smile on his stupid face. He looks in the mirror at his chipped teeth and scars. The mouse brown hair that looks like it needs a haircut (but not in a good way). His wrists a bad day away from being slit. His left leg just shorter than his right, giving him a look of being permanently disheveled. And smiles. That’s how stupid this boy is. He is the straight to video sequel to your summer hit movie. He is the verse to that song on the radio you have to hum cause you can’t remember the words. You couldn’t break this kid’s heart, he is so far beyond that. This is the kind of kid who blew out the candles on hope all alone for too many birthdays to remember. And no one has ever fallen in love with anyone with a smile that’s dripping with “please die”. So why is he smiling? Because he can hear the droning guitars and words streaming under the bathroom door. They wrote his moods. The boy wished he could live in the “humdrum towns” and “coastal villages”. He sang “I wish I weren’t me” over and over again just flat of the key of love until he forgot the words and could only hum along. Everyday was the same. The same stupid smile on the same stupid boy. Until the days blurred into a haze and the boy dropped into a depression. Not a cool dark room and cigarette depression like the songs he loved, but one that felt like he was being smothered by a safe, suburban, monotonous blanket. Everything felt like a headache to the boy. Every face, every stupid stuttered sentence all wrapped up into the biggest headache ever. So the boy took an aspirin. And another and another and then went to sleep, lullabyed by hopes he would never wake up (see also: “tell my mom, I’m sorry- I just can’t be bothered anymore”). When he woke up the headache was gone and in it’s place was a stomachache that felt like bird beaks and teeth, and a new headache in the form of his mother’s worry. She said he was okay he just got confused. She said he was okay but he just needed to talk to someone. So the stupid, stuttering, ugly boy was sent to a doctor. The boy had never been more scared in his life. But he explained his headaches, the songs and his dreams, and sat there with that stupid chipped grin on his face. He was ecstatic to have someone listen to him even if his mother had to pay them to do it. The doctor listened to the boy talk about how the vinyl feels and how the places looked inside his head. And then he gave the boy a bottle of pills and told him to put away his records and take one when he felt sick in his own skin or like he was breathing on the bottom of the ocean (see also: breathless). These were the headaches and the depression, but they were just thoughts that could be wished away with a simple pill. These were the reasons the stupid, stuttering, ugly, forgettable boy wasn’t popular. Why he couldn’t fit in. Why he was so morbid. But the boy was too stupid to know this and so he took his grin and the pills and walked home. First he threw out all of his records, trashed his heart and then he went to sleep. The first night wasn’t bad at all. He had a dream that he was trapped inside a burning glass box. His lungs seared as the glass melted. There were just enough holes poked in the glass for him to gasp through for someone to come and save him. To bring on the mo(u)rning. But there wasn’t anyone there and even if there was he was pretty sure they wouldn’t come for a mess like him. He woke up as alive as he ever felt. The second night was a little bit harder. He felt homesick for places he had never been. He missed hearts he had never loved. The third night was unbearable. He crawled along the floor towards the crack of light in the bathroom door. He opened it and found the pills the therapist had given him. The bottle read “Clandestine Industries” on the side. The boy should have found this quite strange but instead he was blissfully unaware (being the stupid little wretch that he was). He took one out. It was huge and black. He closed his eyes, put the pill in his mouth and took a sip of water. But the pill went halfway down the boy’s throat and stopped. This stupid and ugly, stuttering and forgettable mess of a boy was choking. And just as he was sure it would no go down, it did. The boy’s eyes felt like they had weights on them. He collapsed on the tile and fell asleep. As his eyes shut the boy couldn’t help but notice how big and yellow the moon looked. When The Boy woke up it was morning, or so he thought. There was a gray light everywhere. His house felt older. The Boy pulled himself to his feet. He felt different, lighter. The Boy shouted and no one answered. No one told him to be quiet or that he was late for school. He went downstairs and opened the door. The sky was overcast. There were no birds or green trees. The Boy ran inside. He believed that this must be a dream. He ran to the bathroom mirror and looked in it. The Boy had become more stunted and ugly (if that was possible) and to make matters stranger he now had a stem of thorns running through his side. He pulled on them and felt a drop of blood fall onto the tile. He laughed to himself at how much he felt like “The Boy with the Thorn in his Side”, just like the song. Everything felt like the inside of a song. His lungs breathed in for the first time. The Boy ran downstairs and outside again. He felt alive for the first time. He felt like the last bullet in a gun meant for revenge, sealed with a kiss. He felt understood. He felt memorable. There were no birds singing; only bats and owls flew through the air hooting and swooping at The Boy. Even the rocks seemed interested in him. The Boy loved all his new attention. He walked around the gray twilight and explored this new world until he felt it begin to grow dark. The sun fell into oranges and reds that looked like the end of the world, burning into something past what words could ever describe. The Boy felt like a weight had come off of his shoulders, or that he had imagined that there was any weight there in the first place. He fell in love with sunsets at 4 in the afternoon. As The Boy walked into he house he felt himself becoming heavier with every step. He also noticed the sun was peaking around the overhanging clouds, as though he hadn’t noticed it all day. He began to feel stupid and forgettable again. He looked down at the stem as it began to wither. The Boy began to panic. He ran back to the bathroom retracing his steps. He was losing his world, trying desperately to hold on. He looked down at the floor and saw dark black tablets lying in an open bottle on the floor. That must be it, The Boy thought. The pills. He picked one up and swallowed it whole. This time it went down easily without water. And as it did the clouds blocked out the light once again and the sun began to set much faster. He could once again hear the bats tapping on the window. The songs were his again. This world was his again…….no heart was safe. Thank god The Doctor had given him these pills. And this world. Little did he know that back in the real world (where he was just a nervous, stuttering , ugly forgettable boy) the doctor was on the phone explaining to his mother how he had given the boy sugar tablet placebos and told him to try to make some new friends. He felt like he now had a place and a name. And The Boy with the Thorn in His Side was in love with his new world. The Boy spent minutes that became like months in his new world. Every time he fell asleep he would dream himself back into the boring, hateful world he cam from. He saw his mother and father talking to the doctor who gave him the pills. Everyone thought The Boy had simply run away……when they even noticed he was gone. He saw people spending more time thinking about him now that he was gone than they had ever spent when he was alive. These dreams always ended with the doctor reaching his hand in so cold, and grabbing him as if to hold him in the world. Each time it was becoming harder as if to hold him in that world. Each time it was becoming harder to wake from. So every time his eyelids grew heavy or the thorns began to die he would swallow a pill. Ironically, his nightmares in this world were of the world he came from The rest of The Boy’s time was spent exploring. He began with the house, which was a twisted version of the one he lived in with his parents. Darker. Grayer. Everything within the house and world was in strange proportion. Bigger and more twisted than he had ever seen. Wolves lived in the walls. They seemed almost robotic as their dark gray fur jagged out, and breath that seemed to be like fire. Their teeth spun in rows like sharks. They lunged at The Boy and tried to snatch him as he snickered down the stairs. On the first few nights The Boy slept in his room next to a coffin that took the place of his bed. The things outside laughed loudly just so The Boy couldn’t sleep. But as he became more and more comfortable he opened the coffin and began lying in it till he grew tired enough to sleep. It was the only piece of furniture in the entire house. One night he was awoken by the laughing outside of his window. He peered out his window into the darkness. He saw lights bursting not far away. They were brilliant. Fireworks strobing in the darkness. Every time one burst and popped it would illuminate two sets of eyes. It sent shivers down The Boy’s spine, not of fear but anticipation. The Boy had been bursting to share this world with someone and he was finally getting his chance. “He-ll-o” he stuttered. His voice was hoarse from not being used. It felt rusty. Suddenly the darkness consumed everything. The fireworks stopped. Desperate, The Boy ran down the stairs waking the wolves in the wall on the way. He ran 40 or 50 feet until he hit the shadows of two people. He could barely make them out. One of them lit a match glowing and revealing two pale faces. The stars crossed and The Boy wished he could have hung himself on them. He stuttered again, tripping on his tongue. This caused the girls to giggle more. “What’s your name?”, The Boy asked. The girl with the darker hair replied “Rattail” and lifted her arm jiggling a dead rat she had tied on her wrist like some morbid form of jewelry: the rodent gold standard, the retching and unraveling of style (have you ever seen someone and known that they owned you before they even spoke). It would almost be seductive if it wasn’t so dreadful. The girl was pale with jet black hair. Strange. But The Boy was in love. The girl continued, “This is my sister Flattop”, gesturing to the tall girl hovering wit her patched dress inches from the ground. She held and axe in one hand. Nothing seemed strange to the boy anymore in this world. The girl’s linked hands. Baths swooped overhead like doves. The Boy asked her if she wanted to know his name. The goddamn kid had cobwebs on the zippers of his pants. She laughed again, glancing down at the thorn now dripping blood, as if he couldn’t be more obvious. Instead she asked him if he wanted to light dandelions with them. He paused. Another fit of laughter. “You’ve never lit dandelions?” she asked, then picked a huge white flower off the ground and lit it. It burst above into one of the brilliant strobes he had seen earlier. They began picking them in bunches and throwing them lit into the night sky. The white ones disappearing in flashes of light and the yellow ones popping loudly and drifting into hazes of smoke in the moonlight. This went on until the sun began to rise and the new friends parted ways. The Boy went back to sleep happily in his coffin. He dreamt that the pills ran out and he found himself back in his former world in the doctor’s office. The doctor’s breath heating up the entire room. The boy was trapped. He was hated and stupid and ugly and forgettable again. He pried his eyes open and wished himself out of the dream. He awoke in the coffin again in a cold sweat. The black and red velvet felt so safe. The Boy met with his new friends again and again as the days stretched into routine. The thorns bled when he spent time with Flattop and Rattail and withered when the gray clouds spread to show the sun. The pills in the bottle grew fewer and fewer as The Boy had the dream of the doctor les and less. He had all but forgotten about the “real world”, until one day the boy held the bottle that read “Clandestine Industries” and saw that there were only a few pills left. So the boy began to ration them. This made the dreams stretch out for longer and the daylight creep in more and more. The Boy realized he was losing his world. He was sure of it this time. He began to devise a plan to save himself. Realizing the connection between his dreams and his new world, he made himself fall asleep and dreamt himself into the doctor’s office. He had Flattop and Rattail wait outside of the coffin and watch to pull him out. Inside the doctor’s office, the boy frantically pulled out drawers in search of the pills. He found a closet full of files of boys and girls, and a lock. Smashing it open, he found bottles of big black pills with the same “Clandestine Industries” label on them. He grabbed as many as would fit in his pockets and ran out the door. By now the breathing was hot on his neck, but The Boy couldn’t see anything but a shadow as he burst out the office doors. He had one more stop: back to the house he had grown up in with the parents who now missed the boy more than they had ever loved him before. There The Boy pulled the withered thorn from his side and in the blood he scrawled “I love you. I am never coming back.” With that he shouted for Flattop and Rattail to pull him out. As he did the shadow’s arms reached for him and he felt caught for a moment. It was the coldest second of The Boy’s life. It felt like it lasted forever, as if his heart had stopped. The Boy breathed in deep as he collapsed on the floor on top of the girls. He hid the pills. He found explaining anything to them, especially of another world, would only induce them into fits of laughter. He felt a chill. It was as if someone had followed him through. But The Boy buried the feeling and allowed himself to be content with the satisfaction of having all the pills he would need for a long time. That night the wolves in the walls didn’t howl at all. As they lit dandelions, The boy saw a figure far off on the skull hill. It appeared to be staring at them, or rather him, as it paced like a caged animal. The next day The Boy went with Flattop and Rattail to see where the figure was standing. The day was overcast as usual. They climbed the hill made of skulls to the cooked tree at the top. There they found a boy, who was too pretty for his own good, dangling. The rope around his neck was tattered. The noose was pulled tight. The Boy with the Thorn in His Side gasped at the sight. Flies buzzed like angels around the hanging boy’s head. The pretty boy looked up and winked. The hanging boy looked familiar. He looked to The Boy like a toy he had one owned and forgotten about. As the girls pulled down the hanging boy, he explained that he had spent his days in a dark closet for as long as he could remember, then had one day woken up here. “Of course” The Boy remembered. This toy had been a Buddy Doll, “a little boy’s best friend”. At least that’s how the marketing went. This buddy doll was far more worn. He was dirty and tired looking. He explained how all the years of being dragged around half-alive made him want to be dead (we are all the corpses bored with our own funerals, the boys you left behind). He was forgotten about (The Boy knew how it felt). My Dead Buddy. They began walking down the hill and through the dandelion pasture. The Boy laughed about the fact that back home these flowers were weeds but here they were Flattop and Rattail’s fireworks. Buddy lagged behind them, noose and all, running to catch up every few feet. He described a man in a white suit he had seen beneath him on the hill that night, studying the house. The Boy stopped dead in his tracks. The blood ran from his face like the air escaping in his dream. He grabbed Rattail’s hand. He was scared. It pushed other feelings through him like a car crash. He dropped an “I love you” (thank god the wind caught it before it was heard). That night buddy and The Boy hid in the tree on skull hill while the girls lay in wait in the dandelion pasture. The claw-like fingers of the tree wrapped around them as sleep came near. Eventually they smelled hot, acrid breath and felt it heating the air around them. It made The Boy feel the same sick feeling of bird beaks and claws in his stomach as before. They peered down through the darkness. They heard growling behind row upon row of shark teeth snapping at the air. Leashed to a large figure in white were the wolves, which had been released from the walls of the boy’s house. The figure was huge. Apparently coming through to this world caused a transformation of sorts. Your insides became your outsides. Everyone was ugly. The Doctor was huge and disproportioned. His teeth were large and his white suit was a dirty off-white now. His empty eyes looked towards The Boy’s house as he sniffed at the air. Coming from the openings in the legs of his pants and his sleeves were even dirtier looking tentacles that appeared to be holding the leash to the wolves. The tentacles spun in all directions and they seemed to be searching for something; a thought or a heart beat. In the distant black air fireworks burst in brilliant colors. The doctor strode forth with the wolves, gnashing their teeth. Separating them from each other was a strain on the eyes. It became hard to tell which was a more brutal animal. The Boy cried out for Rattail as he slid from the tree. Buddy fell through the branches moments later. They ran down the hill slipping on bones, The Boy grabbing a few as he ran. As they reached the pasture they saw The Doctor’s huge body walking towards the house. Behind him, his tentacles dragged Flattop and Rattail by their throats. The Boy caught up with them just inside the huge door and Buddy threw his noose around the necks of the wolves. With a great force he sent them slamming into the wall. The wolves seemed to fall to pieces and slide back together, teeth spinning and snapping at the room. Yet they were trapped back in the wall. The Doctor spun and pinned The Boy up against the wall with another tentacle. Buddy tried to run but was caught in his own noose against the wall and found himself hanging, half dead again. The Doctor’s focus was on The Boy again. The Boy couldn’t breathe. His lungs felt like they were exploding. It’s funny the thoughts that run through your head when you feel your life slipping. Had The Doctor made this world? Had this been an experiment or a dream? The Boy choked. He woke up on the floor upstairs. The Doctor was leaning over him with a huge needle. He had locked the girls in the coffin with chains attached to a massive heart shaped lock. The scene looked like a wedding party gone bad. The bride was beautiful (too bad she’d never make it to the honeymoon) turning blue with the bridesmaid locked in a pine box. The groom with the coldest feet ever, left at the alter. The Doctor held the thorns between clamps, sticking them with the needle and injecting a dark fluid. The Boy felt sick. He no longer felt safe in his own skin. The thorns began to wither. The Boy felt himself slipping back to his old self. He saw the clouds disappearing outside. The sun ripped through the room lighting every inch of dust and dirt, imprisoning them all within the moment. The bats began to fate into blue sky. He felt inside his pockets for the bones he had picked up on the way down the hill. He sharpened his flaws and disappointments into daggers. The room slowed. Every single grain on the floor came into focus in The Boy’s eye - like a bullet through a flock of birds. He smashed The Doctor in the face with a bone, stunning him. He grabbed the keys from around The Doctor’s neck and unlocked the chains from the coffin. The girls were blue inside and the rush of air brought life to their eyes. The girls jumped out and helped to hold The Doctor down as they used a hammer to drive the bones into his feet, holding him in place. Dark black blood spouted out from his feet. The Doctor expressed no emotion or reaction to the pain, though he tried to lift his feet which were trapped in place. Maybe if he could have read The Boy’s eyes he would have seen “say a prayer for everything you’ve ever loved cause you will never see it again”. The Boy no longer cared for himself or his heart but only to save this place, to save this new world. He ran to the bathroom and got a bottle of pills and needle and thread. The Doctor was now thrashing like a rabid animal as he saw The Boy with the pills. His teeth seemed to enlarge and sharpen to knives as The Boy drew close, like an animal caught in a trap, lashing out at everything in a last act of desperation. But you couldn’t touch this kid right now, bullets would have dodged him. He shoved the pills down The Doctor’s throat before Rattail stitched his mouth shut so he couldn’t spit them out. The Doctor’s tentacles because to wither and fall off, each one still searching, grabbing for The Boy. He thrashed about. And then as the clouds drifted back together, and the room returned to its usual gray, he disappeared. The Boy went downstairs and saw Buddy hanging there, finally resting. Dead or alive, he looked peaceful, so The Boy left him there like a toy on the shelf. He looked down at the withering thorns and realized he had used all of the pills to get rid of The Doctor. The Boy felt tired. He hugged Flattop and Rattail. Good night was goodbye. Rattail said “I guess we are all there ever was”. Somehow it made sense. Or maybe not. He hugged her tight, mixing their tears to be bottled and fermented, so they could be drunk on each other when this was all over. Hope never wanted them, but they too it anyway. The Boy then lay in the coffin and fell asleep. He dreamt himself awake. He woke up as alive as he ever was. He was in his bed in a cold sweat. He reached down for the thorns, but couldn’t feel a thing. Only huge scars stuck out where the thorns once were. Every song that ever mad eth boy feel in love ran though his head at once. The doctor never returned to his office and his parents began to look for a new physician. The boy prayed for car crashes and heart attacks to take him back. Somehow they dreams and nightmares were like life on the run, and there was nothing chasing him anymore. As he grew older the nightmares were harder and harder to come by. He became forgetful of how to get back and forth, finding the heart shaped lock on more and more of the places he was trying to get to. Stuck where flies weren’t angels, where dandelions were just weeds. Here is The Boy with the Thorn in His Side, dying in your world. A man made monster with every human emotion, overdosed on worthlessness in a world that could never wrap it’s head around him (so don’t even try). When it’s all over just remember every single word you ever said was always just a bullet to his head. Bury him underground between friends and love - the only things that are gonna make it to the end with him. Look for his body buried beneath where the yellow weeds are growing and know he’s still living in his nightmares. This story never really had a point. It’s just a lull - a skip in the record. We are addresses in ghost towns. We are old wishes that never came true. We are hand grenades (and every word you say pulls the pin). We are all gods, we are all monsters. It never really begins or ends because Somewhere, there is a kid that looks and feels just think thi(u)s. To you this kid is probably just a headache, but to me he is gold. “behind the hatred there lies a murderous desire for love” 143 There’s not a siren that can keep me from your window. There’s not a pill that can keep you from my mind… END