Havoc

by Christopher Bollen

The fun of our poolside chats lies precisely in how much we blur the boundary between reason and fantasy.

“The problem with Otto is that disliking him makes me feel like the world’s worst person.

Only a fool confuses curiosity for compassion.

It’s a shame that a story can’t kill a person upon delivery, entering the ear like a bullet and exploding on impact inside the brain. Stories can destroy a listener, can break a person into a million pieces. But they can’t kill.

Now my past knows where to find me.

The old and stubborn only get in the way.

But it’s as impossible for me to recall the sensation of being young as it would be for him to imagine the slow-motion plane crash of old age.

Get rid of all this trouble by getting rid of you.

Be an ant, carry this piece of leaf across the dirt and into the hole. No thinking required.

a child-size monster sleeping in a king-size bed.

Don’t look. If you don’t see, you don’t know, and if you don’t know, the worst hasn’t happened yet.

“I really thought we were happy. But one day you wake up and realize you’ve been running on the fumes of what your relationship used to be.”

But Egypt is just like our United States, Mags. It doesn’t matter whether they’ve caught the right person. It only matters that they have someone in custody to blame.”

A little boy named Otto, agent of havoc, destroyer of peace.

Nothing in the wild dies peacefully of old age.

If you’re already ash, no one can touch you. Your bones can’t be dredged from the dirt, exhibited, picked apart.

Who will be left to see me one last time in my coffin? The answer is no one, which is just as well.

How can a person live for eighty-one years on this deranged planet and not be crazy? Why must I feign total sanity for the comfort of those who’ve been here such a short time?

One rule of life is that it’s easier to lodge than dislodge.