[FICTION]

[02/04/26]

Ordinary Idols

by Jannat Alam

Girl works at Costco. She works in the chicken room and everyday, after hours of pulling legs and wings, she tells Jules about her day when she visits him in the garage he lives in. What kind of girl wants to hang out in a garage, his mother would ask if she were here. A Chicken Girl, Jules would say. Chicken Girl talks a lot. She can talk about anything. It’s a talent and a skill Jules doesn’t have but wants. He wants to take her voicebox and split it into two and graft a piece onto his so that he can talk a lot too, just like her. He would only need half of it. The rest would grow into his, like a scab or a branch. Yes, he would only need half of it. He would close in on her neck when they were intimate or maybe in action while she’s telling Jules all about the different things everyone might be thinking at work, as if she were reading their minds. Jules believes she can read minds but can’t read his because he’s blank and that’s why she keeps coming around, to finally turn off from all the minds she reads at work and look at him like a mirror. Jules wants to be a mirror because he is only capable of being a mirror. It is good to want what you have, he thinks. 

Chicken Girl is quiet today because she’s seen through him and Jules is scared that she’s going to leave him for someone who can beam thoughts directly into her brain. There’s nothing to see through with Jules and that’s the point. He has no preference, no context, no wants, no desires. He wants to be told what to do and to do it. Chicken Girl wants a person to visit, not a place. She wants thoughts and ideas and desires teeming through him like the colony in her head and for the leader of his colony to abdicate their throne and join their workers with hers to make a supercolony. They could hyphenate Chicken Girl and Jules and they could become one person, like two bacteria colliding into one big mass of organs and cilia, or like the freighter truck he saw once crash into a Subaru on the freeway because the truck driver was drunk and his drunk wanted to see fire. Chicken Girl was the drunk and she wanted Jules to be the car crash but Jules doesn’t feel anything anymore and remembers just watching the freeway on fire thinking he shouldn’t get into car crashes. 

It’s because he got drunk and high because Chicken Girl gets drunk and high—she’s drunk and high all day, pulling legs and wings—and Jules wanted to be where she was, with her, even though he knows it’s not the same place for him. His face slipped and then the Nothing started to kiss Chicken Girl underwater like a fish mouthing bubbles. He hated the Nothing. The Nothing takes over and refuses to understand the words that are only said in silence. Chicken Girl saw the Nothing and was confused because how could there be nothing when there is everything in her? She doesn’t believe in God but when she was arrested for possession once she learned fear, and fear is something. There can’t be nothing. Do you not feel fear? You can’t be past that. No one’s past that. And what about love? Love is something. Why don’t you try to love me, like I love pulling legs and wings? Like I love getting drunk and high in the morning and in the afternoon and in the evening. Chicken Girl does not say these things. Jules thinks these thoughts for her, in his mind, and feels an ant in his head abdicating. 

The cricket is in his throat again. It’s in his throat and it wants to come out and bite Chicken Girl’s tongue for the flesh and meat of it all. Flesh and meat. Pulling legs and wings. It turns him on. He can’t say why. He has no words. He has the Nothing. It turns him on. Chicken Girl swirls her tongue in his mouth. He doesn’t know what to do with it. He wants to turn the music on but you can’t request accommodations in real life. Chicken Girl has a real tongue. It tastes like Costco beer. It turns him on. The Nothing wants to lie there and taste the Costco beer on Chicken Girl’s tongue while thinking of her pulling legs and wings. The Nothing wants him to crawl into her mouth which smells like Costco beer and burrow into one of her molars and live in it like a cavity. He’d yell each and every thought he had out the window of the molars and into the back of her throat. The thoughts would reverberate around her brainstem like smoke rings until they reached the colony of her mind and all her ants would stand at attention, listening to the big voice calling from the bicuspids. Maybe he would start a fire in her jaw. Maybe he’d smoke the ants out. Maybe he’d live there, quietly plotting, until he had made enough dirty bombs from plaque and lager and saliva to shred the colony to pieces. Or maybe he’d just exist as a dull ache she can only afford to ignore because she can’t pass a background check. She was arrested for possession once. 

Chicken Girl hits her pen again and again. They are watching King of the Hill. She tells him about a coworker who told her to take out the trash but she was transferred to the registers before she could get to it and now she thinks the coworker is gonna track her down and kill her for not taking out the trash. The coworker is gonna follow her to her car after her shift and shoot her three times between the eyes with a revolver for burdening him so greatly. Chicken Girl doesn’t want to be a burden. Chicken Girl wants to be Chicken Girl. A person, place, and thing. There’s a method to the trash, Chicken Girl says. You have to sort it, and it’s a burden to sort. My coworker thinks I’m a great burden and wants to kill me to lift his burden. I want to be shot so as to not be a burden. I don’t want you to get shot, Jules says. Or thinks. Or mouths underwater into a bubble, wishing it would pop directly next to Chicken Girl’s ear. I’m a burden, Chicken Girl says. I’m heavy and I’m a burden and I’m gonna crush you. She climbs on top of him. Like gristle in the machine that goes shhhhh-whirrrrrrr. She doesn’t know the name. She’s Chicken Girl but she’s only worked at Costco for a few weeks. It’s a new job. She can’t pass background checks. It turns him on. 

Chicken Girl went to college once. She dropped out after developing psychosis from psychedelic and stimulant abuse. She takes medication. They make her feel like lukewarm soup. She drinks too much and smokes too much now to heat the soup. It only simmers. She misses scalding herself. She misses being the moon. I went by Luna for a bit, in college, as a way to reinvent myself. A new name is a new self. You can call your own name and make angels out of yourself, she tells Jules. I want you to find the angel in yourself. She hits her pen. There’s a way in which even fear can be ordinary. These days I like feeling anxiety. It’s something. You have to have something. The void is about endurance. Breathing in to breathe out. There’s something pathetic in being inevitable. Accepting things as they are. You have to be a dreamer. Dreams are higher conceptions. Have you ever read Thoughtforms by Annie Besant? I read it in college. I dropped out. Thoughts have shape and entity. My life is a cartoon and my thoughts have shape and entity, like comic strips. Imagine that. I like imagining that. I imagine a lot of things, Jules. I wanted to work an email job. I wish you could get me an email job but you’re a teacher. You could have had an email job but there’s something wrong with you. Too blank to make connections. Do you still want to kiss me? I say such horrible things. I can’t stop talking. You’re so silent. 

I like when you talk, Jules says. He kisses her jaw. 

I only talk to fill up the space your silence takes up. Like my words are little cartoon piranhas eating your silence, bite by bite. Ar-ar-ar. You know even sound takes up space? And they make shapes depending on the sound? All these sound waves just wrangling all around us and we can’t even see them. I think it’s the same with thoughts. My thoughts can wriggle into your ears on the astral plane just like sound waves can. I have to believe in this or I’ll lose all belief in being known, in being accessed. I want to be accessed. I want to be known as I know myself. It’s narcissistic, I know. I know I’m a narcissist. But what else can you be sure of if not the Self? But sometimes I can’t even imagine myself. Know myself. My body is not myself. I don’t feel it. I feel like a little alien operating a mechsuit, and I watch this little alien in its mechsuit do its thing like I’m watching some anime on TV. Like I’m watching a star trapped in a blackhole, beating itself against its confines like a moth in a jar. I can’t imagine the star just giving up. Stars shouldn’t give up. They’re stars. She hits her pen. 

I feel like I’ve given up, Jules says. She was on top of him. 

What did you even have to give up, truly? Do you know what sacrifice even means? No offense, but there’s something wrong with you. There’s something wrong with me too, that’s why I like you. There’s nothing left. I don’t see the same thing in you but I still see the same sense of abomination. You’re an abomination, just like me. Out of joint. Out of mind. Something’s wrong with you and I don’t wanna fix it anymore. I used to think I was a fixer, but then I realized I just liked being surrounded by the same futurelessness I see in myself. I like seeing myself. I like mirrors. I’m a narcissist. I’ve been so alone my whole life my only friends were mirrors. I needed to be surrounded. I needed stimulation. I needed to see myself clearly. I invented the mirrors to see myself clearly. It’s only myself in this world. You said it yourself, there’s nothing left. But you have to create the something just like I invent my mirrors. Why don’t you look at yourself, Jules? 

Chicken Girl has a hand around his throat. It felt good. 

Why don’t you look at yourself, Jules, why don’t you look at yourself? I want you to look at yourself. Why aren’t you doing what I want? Why aren’t you what I wanted? I want you to be what I wanted, Jules. Be what I want for me. Be every single pathetic thing I see in myself for myself. I want to look at you as I look at myself. I want to be with you as I am with myself. You’re a patchwork of a person and I want to rearrange each part so that it looks like me. I wanna make you over and over in my image like a god. I am no god and every god. The Everything is the Nothing. Even creation must get desperate. I don’t believe in God but I believe in fear, and I believe God was so fearful of the Nothing he crawled into creation like an infant in a warzone crawls towards his mother’s blown-off tits. We must create to stave off the Nothing. That’s the tragedy of my life, Jules. There is no philosophy for simple girls. There isn’t language for people like me and I have no ability to create it for myself because I got brain damage and dropped out. Creation is godly. I lost my godhood. I wanted to be a musician.

I want to be your mirror, Jules choked. 

She hits her pen and tightens her grip. But you can’t. People aren’t mirrors. Even if you are blank. You’re a little boy who went blank once and never came back. You’re a spoiled runaway. I bet you were the type to make a big show of gathering your toys into a knapsack just like in the cartoons and you probably announced that you were leaving to see if anybody cared. They probably laughed at you. They probably told you to do it and when you couldn’t they probably laughed at you some more. You’re a little snail, a little turtle flipped over on its back. You expose your soft belly and wield pity like a weapon. It’s a weakness. I hate weakness. Affliction won’t save you, I learned that in college. Affliction creates void. And void is necessary for fear. You saw the void and decided to live in it instead of fearing yourself into creation like a normal person. You’re not a normal person. It’s why you can’t get an email job. I hate and like that about you because it’s familiar but not the same. You’re familiar and not the same. You’re an adjacent recognition. I made that up. It’s a phrase now. I will create language for myself even though I’m damaged. The damage creates the language. I think it makes me special. Do you feel special, Jules? Sometimes I want to make you feel special. Most times I want to hurt you. I don’t know why I want to hurt you. It’s a form of recognition. 

You can hurt me, Jules whispers. He wants to lose consciousness. 

It’s because you’re pathetic. You make me want to hurt you. Like that song, “Lover I Don’t Have To Love.” I love Bright Eyes. Let’s play some Bright Eyes. She hits her pen then plays the LIFTED album off her phone. The screen is cracked and her other hand is still on his throat. It’s getting sweaty. She thumbs his Adam’s apple. I like losers, you know. Realistic, confident losers. You’re not confident. You showed yourself too quick. Maybe to a human your belly might have been an invitation but to another animal it’s a sign of submission. It’s pathetic. It makes me want to hurt you. If I slapped you out of nowhere you’d just think you deserved it. You wouldn’t ask why because all you know is to endure, counting numbers in your head until it’s over, like the worthless child you once were. Why don’t you feel me? Why don’t you look at me? You only let the Nothing in because it’s familiar. Like I let you in because you’re familiar. It’s your lizard brain seeking warmth on a hot stone. You want to reach for something that’s already there. You want to be held in place, like a loser. You’re a loser. I like losers. 

I like you, Jules says, weakly.

JANNAT ALAM is based in the Inland Empire. She used to edit Reap Thrill.