Nothing to See Here

by Kevin Wilson

Madison had a kind of directness that I’d not experienced before, where shit that should get her killed somehow seemed okay because her eyes were so blue and she didn’t seem to be joking.

She looked psychotic as she said this; I wanted to make out with her.

I didn’t feel anything like Mary Poppins, that bitch. I needed a prop, some magic umbrella that played music or something.

That was my plan, to let them control themselves until they couldn’t control themselves. It’s how I would have wanted to be treated if I were a demon child.

“Do you have any other ideas? Please say you have other ideas.” “Well, Jesus, Mr. Ph.D. in fire management, I do have other ideas.

I looked around, I am not joking, to see if the kids had sprinkled bread crumbs to make their path visible to me. They had not. Goddamn, these children. Not a single crumb of bread. And now some witch was eating them. Or they were burning down the witch’s house. Whatever they were doing, I knew who would get blamed.

I felt like a coach in an inspirational movie, like the music would be really stirring, and you’d see the players’ expressions as they started to get it, and it wouldn’t be long before they were hoisting me up on their shoulders, fucking confetti just raining down on us.

But teaching required preparation. You had to learn it first, and then you taught it.

If you were rich, and you were a dude, it really felt like if you just followed a certain number of steps, you could do pretty much whatever you wanted.

He looked insane in that way of people who put great effort into choosing ridiculous clothing. I prayed this was not the doctor. “I’m the doctor!” he said, waving to the children. “Oh god,” I said, and Carl surreptitiously jabbed me in the side.