“It’s a slow burn.”

Steady raindrops, fat, and red as blood, flowed in vertical streams. The rickety-clack rainfall pounding loud as a train at the roadside motel’s windows and awnings. The heavy clouds of Heaven above, opening, as if God were gutting an elk...

“It’s quantitative, the cucks and their boogeymen, using sticks of dynamite as dildos ... Like it’s an easy enema, you know ... But the cat’s out of the bag, and it’s the foulest of beasts...”

A flush crept up Fuckethead’s pendulous cheeks as he counted his blessings. His eyes popped. After all, he’d just escaped the rampaging lion that’d been terrorizing the city for weeks.

“A slooooow burn...”

Fuckethead then convulsed, briefly, then did angry fits of ballet as Europe’s “The Final Countdown” began blasting from a phone in the bathroom...

“...”

“It’d been a slow but controlled burn, beyond any cozy assumptions. Our assumptions arrested in motion ... Our gunboat rowing upstream. But hey, look, goddammit, calories do burn quicker when you’re running away from a rampaging lion.”

A reading light in the corner of the dim motel room was flickering. Neon, animated hieroglyphics were dancing on the room’s white walls. Moving like cartoons, the hieroglyphics displayed scenes of utter depravity: A man with one leg sawing off another man’s arm ... A camel, with a large erect penis, doing jumping jacks and lunges...

“The slow burns ... They were seasonal. Comforting as a kidney stone, welcome as a swarm of wasps at an outdoor wedding ... But the burns, for all their flaws, the burns never shook the pillars, were never used as anti-think weapons ... But the burns eventually blistered, became the violence of insatiable desire ... Triggered a host of consequences...”

“It’s children’s worst nightmares, really, and even men of steel will rust ... But that cowardly cat ... That cat is fucking suicidal. That cat is going kamikaze ... That cat is clawing its way out of a wet paper bag...”

A naked 90-year-old woman lay sound asleep atop the motel bed. Her frail body had been painted bubble-gum pink, head-to-toe, and she lay spread out like a starfish.

Fuckethead sat on the right edge of the motel bed and became illuminated by a white halo, surrounded by it, the same way the white of an eye surrounds the black. Then Fuckethead started sobbing and panting sighs as he sharpened a sickle...

A wrinkled lion suit was covering the old fridge-sized TV, opposite the motel bed. The lion suit splotched in blood stains...

“I’d been watching the Will Smith slapping Chris Rock video clip from the Oscars...” whimpered Fuckethead, choking back tears, “I watched the video 794 times. I watched it in slow motion. I watched it sped up. I watched it on a continuous loop for over two hours ... I just couldn’t take my eyes away...”

Fuckethead really was weeping nonstop, shedding enough tears to rival a rain cloud. Fuckethead lamenting his many misfortunes, the captivity of his introspective exile...

“The pink elephant was the size of a show pony. But it was focused and prepared ... It played matador with the lion. Got bloodied real good. But, even after innings, its tusks were still intact and gleaming like desert mirages ... A real triumph of the spirit, I’d say...”

“You see? You see what happens? When we bring snowflakes and sensitivity into the lion’s den? You see what happens? When we worship Kardashians and butt stuff instead of an omnipotent God?”

“ ... After all, it’s that plunge, into the hazy idea of gloom. It’s the plunge that’s attractive, not the splat, not the mess left for the cleaners ... Nah ... It’s the pink elephant, on IG, with its dick out, bungee jumping off a house of cards...”

“It’s more than the implications of candlestick charts and international penis size surveys ... It’s the question of who exactly is measuring thousands of penises, their methodology, and, obviously, such a survey’s motivations...”

Around Fuckethead flew a noisy, baseball-sized mosquito. The insect had a face like Mark Zuckerberg. But Fuckethead paid the mosquito no mind...

Bloomberg TV began broadcasting from the phone in the bathroom. The phone was propped above the toilet, and the phone’s reflection bounced off the toilet water ... But still ... no news about the recent spate of lion encounters...