I’m Bob, I say. I’d like to introduce myself before the confusion sets in. As is often if not always the case. I’m the writer, director, and star of this film. I wear so many big hats.

No, I didn’t break into your house. You left your back door open for me or any number of repellent and dangerous guests. In fact, I’m surprised you just noticed me. I’ve been here for days, circulating through closets, crawlspaces, and ducts.

I guess it’s easy to stay hidden among all this junk. No need to thank me for degreasing your oven and catching up on the laundry, by the way.

Don’t worry about your lines. Deep down you already know the script. You just need my Actor’s Toolkit to extract the character incubating within your tummy.

And to address the elephant in the room, given the recent spate of murders in the neighborhood, let me say that I wholly believe in the sanctity of human life and could never support the murder of a single person.

You can feel safe with me.

I mean that. I really do.

Are we good now?

Can’t help but notice you're a little camera-shy. A tip: Think of this camcorder not as a device for recording but communication. Soon, you’ll be in a chamber where many mirrors generate thousands of encounters with friends and foes.

During the process, as I test the limits of your senses, expect your skin to go red and release feces. There may be a bit of nattering, too, after I inject mystery sauce into your brainstem.

Let me fill you in on our respective roles.

I’m playing the part of Alpha Male. I’m the policeman with a gun to your head. I rub my crotch and draw a bead until I shoot goo.

And you, you’re sitting in that plastic chair in the moldy corner of the room. Lacking a mouth from which to scream, you make farting sounds by fingering the valve of an inflatable pig. 

Get into the character of Sissy by dressing as a maid.

This scene calls for a crowd of bystanders who grunt, snuffle, and roar with anticipation. Later, I’ll doctor the footage by inserting a blur of humanoid shapes to surround us.

The pixels will form the walls of a room named Hell.

But for now, let’s concentrate on us, our profound moment of communion.

It will be our little gift to the world, a precious, nameless thing too soft to survive continuous touch.

To start, how about a hug? We can spare a moment to pet and play. It’s been a while since I felt any warmth in my hands.

Let’s shuck our clothes. I think nudity will make this more enjoyable for both of us.

Much better, right? Now let me zoom right in. Try to abandon yourself to my limbs and force your convulsions into a rhythm.

Don’t worry about diseases. I sterilize all the equipment in my Actor’s Toolkit. Wait a moment while I manipulate a condom over this hook.

Now let us begin in earnest. The action of this film revolves around my line: I’m Bob. I’d like to introduce myself before the confusion sets in. Which is often if not always the case.

Which prompts your monologue: 

I’m a useless whore. I’m only good at being fucked in this space. Any attempt to think beyond the room results in its replication.

For instance, asking the question, “How many people are cached inside my tummy?” generates thousands of structures, each as deformed as much as our convergence.

I apologize for my unoriginal face. Originally a hodgepodge of alien fragments, I underwent plastic surgery so that I can stand in front of any mirror and hurt a stranger. I love to hurl insults at a smooth, generic ball.

Meaning, I drive off the spleen by entering a maze of self-degradation, exchanging focal points and POVs until I reach the great return to illiteracy that is the climax.

Aside from that, I spend most of my time in a plastic chair issuing noises from my face, deliberating with the mold by blowing raspberries and speaking Japanese at inhuman speeds.

How did you escape my tummy? Did you need a breather from the Rorschach? 

If you’re going to talk to me, please shout into this metal funnel. The shape guides the noise into my ear. An accident with an explosive device left me deaf, blind, and dumb.

Oh ok. You’re here as part of a psychological intervention for my hoarding addiction.

Well, I like to wear my clutter as a costume. The real me–a precious, nameless thing too soft to survive continuous touch–wasted away long ago, waning into a clump of hair and exposed nerves.

It’s hard being an aged actor. After all those failed audition tapes and casting calls, all the nattering and memorization. My one-man show Glop Machine got terrible reviews.

Overtime, your personal history distends into one, long protean scene. As my creative aspirations died, I turned to the production of smut and snuff.

I’ll just slip into this maid’s outfit before I tidy up.

Well, I can’t part with those xeroxes on my Frigidaire. I collected them from lamp poles and bulletin boards. If I stare at them long enough, the missing persons speak in a way that makes sense only to them.

And no, I can’t get rid of black towers of videotapes because I play doctor by operating on old sitcoms.

The characters never make it out alive. But that’s ok because corpses are rooms in which games are played.

Their mouths go strange, giving vent to trapped gasses. Eventually the surface distorts into one great blister. 

I  digitize, cut, and reconfigure until the confusion sets in. Which is often if not always the case.

If only I can arrange the parts into a contraption that produces a little gift.

I thought this was supposed to be an intervention. This conversation is getting a little one-sided, don’t you think?

Well, I can throw away my big-hat collection and video cameras because I’m stepping down as director. I’m terrible with directions. I enter any building and somehow wedge myself into closets, crawlspaces, and ducts.

Despite your silence, I thank God you’re here to help me.

I’ve locked myself in this room with these things for years. To pass the time, I’ve coerced fingers through buttonholes and applied fluids to flat surfaces.

I like to paint big skies.

I’m not sure if this is a work desk or the most elaborate jack-off station known to man. 

Oh, this is not an intervention?

Listen officer, please don’t point your gun at me. I’m not a monster.

I’m sorry if my appearance disgusts you. During my time here, I let my personal hygiene lapse a bit. The infections weep and stain my frilly outfit.

If you prefer, I can reinvent myself and take on a novel form.

I don’t think I have much time left. A person nearing death empties not with words but farting sounds.

I’ll try to evolve from brain-damaged maid to alpha-male cop.

Just let me selffuck and gestate for a bit.

The scene goes a little like this:

A few extraneous curds take shape within the passage of a narrow tube. The chapped rim, contracting at the wrong time, pinches the head into an elongated sausage.

Once evacuated, the soft, steaming limbs draw together on the puddled floor. For every orifice, a scream.

A healthy baby Bob!

Hello, Bob. It’s Bob again, I say as I jiggle in afterbirth. 

Consider us a happy family, if you please.

Only a matter of time before the flies blot out the biological waste.

Hey, where did you go?

[Audience laughs]

Oh, good. You haven’t left yet.

I think isolation has obliterated me. Sapped, the brain contracts into a small mass of dimly lit quadrants. Any act of reproduction, artistic, social, or otherwise, becomes abortive from the get-go.

I’ve spent enough time with the footage that it feels like I’m watching a home movie. I’ve uploaded the scenes to the media-sharing platform Glop Machine. Side effects of prolonged scrolling include numbness and death.

We need to pass a quartet of security measures to enter the site.  

I really have no friends or followers now that this place purged itself of all the bots.

Ok, here we are.

The ads and interruptions enhance the viewing experience.

As they tease the return to illiteracy that is the climax, you grunt, snuffle, and roar with anticipation.

Meet the Bobs: an endlessly reconfigurable family. This scene always makes me cry. The hot, big-titted stepmom wiping custard from her belly. The stepdad shooting stern, I-love-you-to-death looks. The 18-year-old stepson and 18-year-old stepdaughter fucking on the hood of a Cybertruck.

Where did their submissive maid go? She always wanders off to lodge herself in ovens and laundry machines.

The family plays musical chairs and smokes out of a four-way Yoda bong. They tease each other for not having faces. And, like a band of explorers, they cross thresholds and march single file to wander the dimly lit quadrants.

The scene goes a little like this:

The one with a bullet hole and stylish shoulder-length haircut takes up the front of the line. Level 1: Encounter the blind merchant outside the haunted house, brandish a weapon to trigger monologue, inhale green particles streaming from his voice hole.

The second in line, upon mishearing the sentence, lowers into a curtsy and whispers a little acknowledgement. Level 2: Enact blood sacrifice to summon an imp with a gelatinous vacuum cleaner for a head, give him your crystals to gain passage into a room named Hell.

The wet face of the third in line gives a little speech distorted by an apple. Level 3: Detonate pipe bombs in the replica room, photograph the mannequins rinsed in fake gore, make duplicates for your senile mother so she can decorate her fridge.

The final Bob, having flipped a shilling so that the opposing sides blur, plucks the coin revolving midair, runs to the front of the line, and continues the game of telephone. Level 4: Wander the garden of trumpet-shaped flowers until the elongated heads bursts from the mulch to scream: Happy Wash-Your-Micropenis Monday! Shatter the craniums with an oversized sledgehammer to escape sissy hypnosis.

Tired of the protean scene, this Bob breaks off from the quartet to go it alone.  But before long, as he wanders the deformed asphalt, he finds himself surrounded by friends and foes. After a bit of nattering, they occupy their respective roles.

With nowhere to go, they squat in derelict houses and party by pouring big cups of juice.

They form a gang of young people masked in tufted wool. They arm themselves for the annual Purge, a night during which all crime, including murder, is temporarily legal.

Tonight, the foot traffic tamps down the vegetation, the homemade bombs level buildings, and the marauders release computerized laughter. The face of the earth smooths into a generic ball polluted with noise.

Attempting to hide, the submissive maid manages to wedge herself face-first under a bed, leaving her ass exposed to any passersby. Throughout the night, she loses count of the people who enter and exit. She distracts herself from the groans, pants, and roars of anticipation by accepting a few phone calls and scrolling through the updates of friends and family.

Rebecca Swanstone visits Japan and breaks her arm.

Alexander Drake gives off the smell of suspended mud. He drools inside a derelict anthill. The froth travels through the barren tunnels.

Ethan Whitaker walks the fence line of his property until he finds himself staring into the kitchen windows of neighboring houses.

Clara Winslow goes to Sweden, eats cheese, and hides secrets behind a metal plate in her forehead.

Nathaniel Grant strokes an alien form crying under the blankets on his bed. He listens to tapes of his changing voice, inhales videometh, and plays tabletop games.

Vivian Hartley participates in online quizzes to win big prizes. She moves through dust particles migrating in a breeze.

Lily Prescott visits Spain, trips, and cracks her head open on a curb.

Harrison Blake enters a municipal building, sits down in a plastic chair, and issues noise from his face.

Yes, I’m applying for the position of security guard.

Even though I lack any relevant experience, I’m perfect for this job because you’ll save money on surveillance equipment.

Don’t let all my verbal tics fool you. I’m something of a savant. I can recall large swathes of historical data. The scientists who’ve studied my brain call me the Human Calendar. Or Human Colander. I forget.

It all started when I signed up for a service to help me liberate my true self. You know, that divine spirit playing possum in the dark room of the subconscious.

MAKE YOUR INNER ARTIST YOUR BITCH, was the title of the promotional email that hooked me.

As part of the subscription, the service spams all your social media accounts and leaves voice messages on your phone.

I participated in the prescribed mantras, rituals, and sacrifices. One night I suffered an episode in which I hallucinated Peppa Pig cutting off my skin with a pixelated knife. She wanted to wear me as a suit, was my guess.

Later, when I came to, I may have shot myself in the head. Or someone else did. The specifics don’t matter, only the bullet suspended in the left hemisphere of my brain.

Apart from the migraines and vocal outbursts, this foreign object laid the foundation for a “Mind Palace.” All the ghosts, ads, and interruptions give me the spooks.

Anyways, just prop me up by the entrance. I’ll breathe through my wide open face and let the scenes greet me. I’ll let my subconscious atomize the data into a haze of particles, regurgitating them for you to better chart and graph.

Johnny Alvarez lives in Yucatán, Mexico, where he runs a shelter for stray dogs. He's currently working on his first collection of short stories.

@AlvarezJoh84751