Hot for Slayer

by Ali Hazelwood

This kind of shit, I mentally informed the universe, does not incentivize good deeds.

I’ve learned to treasure little joys, like making other people’s lives better by lending a hand or a smile, doing small talk, laughing at bad puns. Sometimes I’m lonely. Sometimes I want more—whatever that means. Not everything is ideal. But I’m capable of finding my own meaning.

my white-hot take is that I’ve done nothing wrong, at least not since I began observing a strictly asshole-tarian diet.

I last drank two weeks ago—a guy who worked as a fixer for the Nestlé executive board—and

Lazlo grabs a knife from the wooden block and uses it to slash the fruit into four pieces. While it’s still in the air. The chunks hit the ground with dull thuds, and we stare at them for a long stretch of silence. Then I clear my throat. “I didn’t know that an apple murdered your family.”