Sprained Ankle – Spencer Eckart

September 20, 2025

Suicides were at an all-time high, so the fed came up with a solution: voluntary self-atomization. Quick. Painless. Poof. You’re just gone.

I got in line a couple times, but never actually went in. Charlie, Shanna, Alex… they went same day. Poof. Gone. Eviscerated. You have to be at least twenty-one, but Alex somehow got through with his fake.

Fucked up ’cause Alex and I were supposed to go fishing at the old pond this weekend. We call it that because it’s hidden, the only pond in the area that’s not filled with radiated garbage. To my knowledge, no older than any of the other ponds. No one’s caught a fish there, nor anywhere else for that matter, in years. It’s suspected there aren’t any fish left.

But that’s not why we went. It was—it is—a way for us to escape the rigamarole, to speak freely without surveillance. Alex and I used to talk about all kinds of shit out there. I wish he’d told me he was suffering. He was so affable. He’d do Monty Python bits, full voices and all. It’s a damn shame he nuked himself.

And I wish he were still around to help shoulder this weight. I’m having a pretty rough go with the state of affairs etc.. He’d know just what to say. Anything I told him he would spin into a sort of tragicomedy… Man, we’d laugh our asses off. Doesn’t seem so funny now.

If I pray, will Alex hear me as part of some collective consciousness? I’m not a monist or any shit like that, but like, it’s comforting to think that Alex’s qualities might live on as cosmic particulate. He really was the best of us.

Tomorrow I might get back in line, but I probably won’t go in. I sprained my ankle anyway so it’s a bitch to stand on. The place is called “Dust to Dust” which pisses me off for some reason.

—

The Fly
after zac smith

There’s a fly in the van. Well, let’s start at the beginning—last night. There were like 4 flies in the van. At that point it was like, say, 9:30pm, but it’s pretty much the summer solstice so it was really bright out. That’s why I could see all the flies in the van without turning on my lamp. Anyways, they all kept like landing on me and I couldn’t tell if they were messing with me but I decided just to let them. I say all this because I think one of the flies formed an attachment to me. I speculate this was the youngest of the flies. Let me explain. This morning 3 of the 4 flies were “perched”, sure yeah, perched on the big sliding door window and as soon as I opened it to get a breath of fresh air they all flew off. One stayed. It would take some coaxing to get him to go, I guess. I kept the door open for like 30 minutes and he didn’t go anywhere. He kept following me around the van and just sitting next to me, or perching? Doesn’t matter. Anyways, he’d like be sitting on the passenger seat door and I’d open it and he would freak the fuck out and fly back inside. So, this is where I get to why I think he was the youngest. Apart from being tiny as fuck, I suspect he’d spent a broad majority of his life in the van. He’d been inside at least like 12 hours so the outside was probably really scary? Like, when we wanna do something and it seems too big we cower towards what is comfortable? I don’t know, again just speculating here. I’m at a pie place now that serves quiche (it’s breakfast time) and I think he’s still in the van. I’ll go check on him in a minute. OK, so like, I just looked it up and apparently flies live 15-30 days? That’s way longer than I thought. Maybe this fly is just dumb as fuck. Maybe flies don’t have any of the emotional capacities that I’m alluding to. I’m gonna check on him anyways. I think maybe I, not he, have formed the attachment. I notice myself defaulting to “he” rather than “she” or “they”. So, sorry about that. I don’t know if that’s all fucked up. And “it” would feel reductive. OK, so I’m back in the van and this fly – he’s perching with me now – is like the smallest fly I’ve ever seen in my life. Definitely a younger one. I have the big sliding door wide open and he won’t leave. I don’t know if that means he will perish in the van in 15-30 days. What do flies need to live anyways? At any rate, a bigger fly just flew in. I hope that she’ll guide our little friend here to freedom, but I’m doubtful. I don’t even know how flies communicate with each other. In regard to the 15-30 day lifespan, I also don’t know how a fly perceives a single day. Like, maybe one day to a fly feels like a really long time. Is this something that can be studied? I think it’s important that we study this. I would google it but I’m on my laptop and don’t know where my phone is and my mobile hotspot isn’t working right now (earlier when I looked up fly lifespan that was on the wifi at the pie place). Anyways, if you don’t hear from me before Friday, then yeah, just know I’m going to process your test results like pretty soon. I honestly thought that the mole you were so freaked out about looked fine. I’m the one who’s a Medical Doctor, not you. What the fuck a bird just flew in the van