Meat Puppets excerpt – Hannah Smart
April 10, 2026
Fidgets echoed through the darkened classroom, killing the illusion of solitude.
“Now, see, if the shooter does make it in here,” Mr. Porter said, and then came the demonstrative creak and slam of the classroom door, “he’s gonna look for movement first. You’re all moving too much. None of you would stand a chance.”
Sydney Morris did his best to remain still. To turn off his brain for a moment. But his brain had no power switch. His brain was a racehorse dead-set on winning its race and then continuing to plow forward once it’s won, past the finish line, past the stands and the audience—a stubborn Forrest Gump of a racehorse—speeding epically and catastrophically toward destruction.
“That’s better,” Mr. Porter crooned. Rubber soles slapped rubber floor as he zig-zagged through the rows of desks, pretending he couldn’t see what lay beneath. “Now, it might just be down to chance.”
The teacher’s footsteps screeched to a polished-toed halt. One moment, Syd was staring through the immediate darkness at Mr. Porter’s creased, dry-cleaned trousers, and the next, he was facing a pointed, outstretched finger head-on. “Pow! You’d be dead, Syd.”
“Do you want me to collapse or something?”
“No need.” Mr. Porter’s steps faded to an inaudible nothing. The lights came on with the type of flicker characteristic of cheap bulbs in underfunded schools. The students climbed out from their makeshift shelters, cracking joints, stretching limbs. “Great job today. Our next drill won’t be for a while. One a semester—that’s what they’re making us do now.”
After that, class proceeded hitchlessly and prototypically, with Mr. Porter lecturing the sixth graders about mixed fractions and the students staring at the clock above the whiteboard, counting down the minutes until lunchtime and willing the long hand to move faster while it seemed to slow down just to spite them. But when the bell finally rang and Syd’s classmates rushed the door, pushing past each other like moviegoers at a flame-engulfed theater, Syd lagged behind.
“Lunchtime,” Mr. Porter reminded him, as if he’d forgotten what the 12:30 bell signified. People often treated Syd like he was stupid—like he knew less, not more, than he let on.
“I know. I just had a question.”
“Hit me.”
“Why did you shoot me?”
Mr. Porter chuckled mock-sympathetically. Fingered his dyed-blond combover. “It was just a drill. I didn’t actually shoot you.”
“Yeah, but why me? Why not Bobby or Martin or Jayden—”
“It was random. Killers usually pick their targets at random. Don’t place any stock in it, kid.”
Syd nodded in slow motion.
“Next time, can I play the shooter?”
“It’s not a game, Sydney. It’s training. It’s preparation—to keep you safe in case of an active threat. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah. So next time, can I train as the shooter?”
“Why do you—”
“I mean, I wasn’t going to get mad at you for shooting me. And I don’t want revenge. I just thought that if I were the shooter…” He finished the sentence in his mind: I’d have shot me too.
1)
Mitchell Larkin stood on a Boston Common clearing in the sweltering June sun, holding a notebook gingerly in one hand, careful not to leave any oil or dirt or fingerprint traces on it, while cupping his other hand over his mouth for maximum vocal projection, apparently unaware that half an organic megaphone doesn’t do much, in physics terms. He never wore sunscreen—found it itchy and slimy—but always underestimated the ease with which he’d burn.
The turnout for the auction was promising. When he’d placed the Craigslist ad, he’d been expecting merely a confused handful of people, but there were like thirty or forty here, many of them seeming to be here on purpose. Grace Reilly had evidently made quite a name for herself—and in Boston of all places. Not exactly the music capital of the world.
“I’ll go for four thousand!” a woman called, chewing the final consonant for a few instants longer than was natural. Mitch weaved his gaze through the madness until he spotted her—tall, thin, and looking to be in the early throes of middle age, with the haughty air of a self-made businesswoman and a green dress that made her almost disappear among the trees.
“We had three, and now we’ve got four!” Mitch announced. “Anyone for five?”
“I’ll do you one better—six!”
Grace Reilly was possibly the first celebrity music biographer, if such a thing existed—critics and fans alike went rabid for her. And the early notes for her latest book on Brian Jones—the crown jewel of the auction—were all contained in Mitch’s hand, which he kept wiping on his Nirvana T-shirt, creating a localized and incrementally-darkening patch of sweat.
“Seven thousand!” someone said.
“Eight!”
“Ten!”
“Thirteen!”
“Fourteen!”
The attendees observed each other, awkwardly intrigued, like a classroom of freshmen being quizzed on a reading assignment none of them completed.
“Anyone for fifteen?” Mitch said. “Going once, going twice…sold! To the man with the mustache.” Cut that thing any narrower and you’ll be Hitler, he added, mentally, before shaking the guy’s damp, sticky hand and trading the notebook for a check.
Mitch and his girlfriend Nell drove home from the auction in near-silence punctuated by nothing but the calming, muffled rush of outdoor airflow and some easy-listening rock song playing at minimum volume on the radio—loudly enough for Mitch to know it sounded familiar but too softly for him to identify it with any degree of certainty. He and Nell often fell into these wordless spells, but Mitch seldom felt the need to fill them. He lacked the typical human allergy to social discomfort.
“Where did you get all that Grace Reilly stuff?” Nell asked, just as the irritatingly recognizable tune faded into nothingness.
“A man can’t be an enthusiast?”
“I’ve never heard you mention being an enthusiast of some music writer. And it was all originals. Must’ve cost a fortune.”
Mitch paused. This topic induced the same sense of nagging inconvenience as a herpes diagnosis might, and broaching it required similar tact.
“You won’t believe this,” he preempted, tailgating the fucker in front of him while himself being tailgated by some other fucker, ready to slam on the breaks at a split second’s notice and praying his pursuer was prepared to do the same. “We used to date.” He said it the way you might say you ran into Obama at Fenway Park.
Nell didn’t reply at first, but Mitch watched intently through the corner of his eye while she sent the information through her internal bullshit detector. “Were you ever planning on telling me you dated someone famous?”
“I dunno about famous. Microcelebrity at best.”
“You just made about twenty-five thousand bucks selling her old stuff to locals.” Nell tucked a couple stray brunette baby hairs behind her ears. Her giant, imposing ears were a caricature artist’s dream. Other than that, she was pretty, Mitch supposed. “Did you want to hear about every person I’ve dated before you?” He immediately regretted asking, because if she said yes, the pattern would become clear. “I mean, you haven’t exactly talked much about your past relationships.”
“I haven’t exactly had many. One, in high school. He was a real dick as well. Told me I’d never make it in the art world. At least you believe in me.”
And Mitch did. Nell was a painter, and she produced what she called “realist works with an abstract tinge”—scenes of bars and beachfronts and houses where everything seemed like it had been put though a subtle, hazy filter. Like reality was off kilter in some manner you couldn’t quite put your finger on. Mitch appreciated that Nell recognized him for the supportive boyfriend he was but loathed the implication that, despite his belief in her talent and abilities, he too was somewhat of a “dick.”
“Look, what’s the big deal?” Mitch asked. “Grace and I aren’t together anymore. She gave me all that stuff. Or left it at my house. Either way, she must not have really wanted it. And now I—actually both of us, really—get to profit. Isn’t that great?”
Another silence, and then, “When I’m famous, are you going to sell the art pieces I made you?”
Mitch scoffed. “No—why would I—”
“Or do you not think I’ll ever be famous?”
“Now you’re just putting words in my mouth. Of course you’ll be famous.”
“Wouldn’t that be crazy if you’d dated two famous people?”
Wouldn’t it indeed? Mitch thought while he barreled into their apartment building’s parking garage at way over the ten-mile-per-hour speed limit. He found it cute how little Nell knew—how little anyone knew, besides him.
One of the paintings Nell had made for Mitch depicted the two of them standing on a cliff overlooking an ocean, hand-in-hand, facing away. The background displayed more vibrance than the people, who appeared figurant-like and sketchy and first-draft-like. The waves were high and foreboding and not at all peaceful-looking, and the sky was one or two shades darker than the average beach sky, its dusky horizon promising the dim dawn of a dying tomorrow. The overall aesthetic environment strongly indicated that some strange twist of fate would soon occur. The figures in the painting didn’t know what it was, and neither did the real-life Nell, but the real-life Mitch had some sort of idea.
2)
Now Mitch lay alone on the bare mattress of the tenth-story Manhattan studio apartment he’d impulse-bought after selling a Nell Sullivan painting for $200,000. Twelve or so boxes sat unopened in his bedroom’s corner. The floor was hard mahogany wood, solid and untarnished—you could just about see your reflection in it. Outside, antlike people reminiscent of those in Nell’s paintings passed across sidewalks, appearing sped-up. If Mitch watched them for long enough, their repetitive patterns of movement made him feel trapped in one of those day-in-the-life time-lapse videos.
Four other Nell Sullivan paintings, each encased in plastic wrapping, sat in a neat stack under the bed atop which Mitch now lay. He’d sell them eventually, but he didn’t know when. Or to whom. Or how long he’d hold off on selling them in order to increase their market value—like, how was he supposed to know when Nell was at the peak of her career and celebrity worth?
He had a financial advisor who was supposed to help him figure all this out. People could crash like stocks, he’d come to learn—some coke scandal within the past year had tanked Grace Reilly and made Mitch happy he’d already offloaded everything she’d left him. What a world it was where cops sniffed around biographers’ vicinities for drugs—where writers could behave like singers and entertainers.
Sometimes, Mitch felt as if his existence were some fickle thing that could slip through his fingers—like someone could snap and wake him up from a dream, and he’d once again be a dumb kid with an uncanny knack for identifying future celebrities. He still felt like a kid, despite now being twenty-eight and no longer having any excuse for acting immaturely or unprofessionally. Once you hit twenty-five, whatever tattered remnants of the kiddy gloves people formerly used on you disappeared. Nobody believed you when you said you didn’t know better.
His financial advisor, a woman named Hayley Duker, was planning to stop by the apartment for a meeting. She’d never been to Mitch’s private residence before, so this visit would be an important progression in the relationship Mitch delusionally believed to be mutually sexually tense. He’d need to do a proper setup of this place—as in like actually make the bed and organize his clothes and unpack a few boxes, maybe leaving a couple in the corner toward which he could self-disapprovingly signal and say, “Haven’t finished unboxing yet. Been a hectic week”—in order to avoid the adult scorn that resulted from him being over the age of twenty-five and no longer a viable target of gentler, kiddy-glove-remnant-wielding scorn. So he shoved a couple boxes into his closet, set the other two against the wall, and strategically opened one so that it looked like he was already in the process of unpacking it.
Hayley arrived at around four, sporting a snazzy blue blazer and black slacks. She always dressed like a bit of a lesbian, which deeply unsettled Mitch; he considered it essential that Hayley be capable of being attracted to him, even if she wasn’t right now—even if Mitch would never date her or even hook up with her on account of her near-zero chance of achieving artistic fame. Hayley was just about the least artistic person Mitch knew. But he also knew that, if being interested in men was anywhere on her radar, even as a repressed seed in the deep recesses of her mind, he could unearth it. He had a talent for making people fall in love with him. Sometimes, he did it without even trying.
“You look nice,” he told her now, as she sidestepped into the apartment. The fact that she’d taken the time to dress nicely but non-provocatively told Mitch that she still saw this as a purely professional endeavor.
“Thanks.”
Mitch ran her fashion choices through a mental checklist. Suit and pants: lesbian. Long, deliberately-styled hair: heterosexual. Nondescript shoes with no heels that would nonetheless still look a bit out of place on a male: the jury’s still out.
“That’s it?”
“Did you want me to return the compliment?” She scanned Mitch up and down, from his Guns ‘n’ Roses T-shirt to his knee-high basketball socks, her eyes lingering on his unkempt hair.
Mitch hastily tousled it. “Sorry about the boxes. Haven’t finished unpacking yet.” Signaled to the two up against the wall. “Been a hectic week.”
“Right. Well, should we…” She examined the room, probably searching for a place to sit and walk Mitch through some important financial information while he tried not to gawk.
“The bed is fine,” Mitch offered and then realized that the statement probably sounded suggestive, which was not actually his intention—at least not a conscious one.
Hayley paused for an infinitesimal click of time before taking a seat.
“You’ve got a very diversified stock profile,” she said.
“And that’s good?”
“Yes,” with a slow grimace that stopped a couple millimeters short of a proper, polite smile. “Prevents you from ever losing too much at once.”
“Or making too much.”
“Well, this isn’t Vegas. You definitely don’t want to be gambling—not when tens of thousands are involved.”
“Right. So tell me again what stocks are.” Mitch knew, but whenever he desperately wished for Hayley to explain something in her soft, slightly condescending voice, this was his go-to fake blind spot.
“We’ve been over this.”
“I forgot.”
She indulged him. “Stocks are essentially tiny portions of a company.” She was bouncing ever so slightly on the mattress—Mitch couldn’t see it, but he could feel it, and it titillated him. “When they’re issued, the company uses that money to grow the business, and if the business does well—becomes more valuable—then each individual share increases in price. If it doesn’t do well, the opposite happens.”
Mitch nodded the way you nod when a concept is just beginning to sink in. “I’m still not sure I get it.”
“Think about what you do when you choose another romantic partner. You look for someone you think will be successful—”
“What do you mean?” But he knew—just didn’t know how she knew.
She huffed in a how-dumb-are-you-going-to-
Mitch was so used to being three logical steps ahead of everyone else in the room that her insight floored him. This was one of the reasons he and Hayley would never work, even if she were headed for fame or fortune or whatever the top of your league is when you’re a financial advisor—she possessed not even a healthy degree of gullibility. But it was also one of the reasons he found her so intriguing—much more intriguing than any of the pseudo-partners he’d used to obtain priceless art and then discarded once they’d captured the world’s attention.
“How would I know whether someone is going to become famous?” he asked.
“You don’t, hence my analogy. You shoot your shot. It’s like buying stock, but the only investment is your time.”
Mitch contemplated the idea of humans having fluctuating value in a commodities market, much like companies. Then something inspired and deranged and perhaps even possible hit him. “What if that weren’t the only investment?”
“Well, there’s also money, I suppose, in the form of gifts and such, but most relationships these days are a pretty even deal—”
“No, I mean, what if I ran like…a human stock trade, where investors could buy shares in pre-famous people, whose value would go up as they approached fame and I became convinced they’d make me my money back? And if they didn’t get famous, or if it became obvious that they wouldn’t, their stock value could drop, which would mean people would be forced to sell for less than they bought for, so I’d still get something out of it. A safe investment, like you said. Either way, I’m doing all right.”
Hayley didn’t say anything for what felt like a good half a minute, which Mitch assumed was because she was just so blown away by his genius she’d been rendered speechless. The persistent, background clicking of his vintage analog alarm clock, one of the few things he’d bothered to unpack, seemed to slow down. “So you do understand how stocks work.”
“Sure, I do.” The clock’s tick, moments ago unobtrusive, now penetrated some deep layer of his brain. The noise was lobotomizing. “I just like hearing you talk about it.” He bit his lip as if attempting to prevent the next sentence from escaping. “And to be frank, I’d fuck you right now on this bare mattress were I not committed to Benji.”
“And because I’d have something to say about it, presumably.”
“Would you?” The word “presumably” gave him hope.
“Do you even love Benji?”
“Are you sure this is within the realm of professionalism?”
“Trust me—we abandoned professionalism a long time ago.” She shifted on the bed, though Mitch couldn’t tell whether toward or away from him. “Do you actually love him?”
“I don’t know that I love anybody.” In lieu of meeting Hayley’s gaze, he stared at his own feet, noticing that the Nike logo on one sock was more faded than the other. “Except—”
“Don’t you dare say me.”
So he didn’t. “Will it work? This human stock trade thing?”
“It doesn’t matter whether it will work because only a complete psychopath would even attempt it.”
“Right,” Mitch said. “So say I’m a complete psychopath…”
“Hypothetically?”
“Sure.”
She flexed her shoulders, ruffling her jacket, which she hadn’t bothered to take off. She never made an effort to make herself at home with Mitch, which he assumed stemmed from an inability to acknowledge her conflictedly intimate feelings toward him but was really because he didn’t own a coatrack. “Maybe. We’d have to develop metrics for measuring proximity to fame—current income, momentum, length of time in the game, general attitude toward ‘the game’—all things that are quite difficult to quantify.”
The fact that she was saying “we” instead of “you” told Mitch he’d won her over. “But if we did manage to quantify them?”
Hesitation. “It would have to be wholly underground, since it would technically qualify as amateur gambling.”
“But you could help me sort all that, right?”
An uncertain sigh. “Right.”
“You want to help me sort all that.” Benji would be stopping by soon, so if they were going to sort it today, they’d have to do it fast.
“Don’t get crazy.”
“Come on, Hayley.” Now it was Mitch’s turn to adjust his position on the bed, and he moved decidedly toward her. “We’re just the same, you and me. You need the extra push to be boldly psychopathic, while I need someone to guide me through the ins and outs of finance. Together, we’ll be unstoppable.”
She didn’t respond, but if Mitch looked all the way in—past her cold exterior, through her dark, expressionless pupils, and into her head, where the soul was allegedly stored—he could see a latent excitement getting ready to bubble over.