sociopathchan | trickster, idek

There was a joke he heard once, one that clung to the ugly wrinkles of his mind like dried blood to a skinned knee

like a hand grasping his shoulder as it plunged a knife into his back

like the cracks along a broken heart.

The joke started something like this: An amputee rolls into a bar and asks the bartender for a joke. The bartenders says ‘You’ll get a kick out of this.’

Jesus enters a hotel with some nails and says ‘Hey, can you put me up for the night?’

A man- no, a woman- walks into a bar. A priest, a rabbi and workman walk into a bar. And the bartender says-

He laughs

no, he giggles.

It’s a bit like picking at a scab, letting the dried blood flake off so new blood wells up, congeals, warps. The words of the joke flake off, get stuck under his fingernails as new bits well up in a dark, black red. He picks priest and rabbi and workman out from under his thumbnail. Alice puts a bright orange bandaid on his knee and kisses it better.

If they have flavors, he thinks, then Alice is smokey, and Percy is natural, bitterly sweet, and he- Chris- Chris is cool and cold and sharp.

If they’re not people then they’re funhouse mirrors, warped like the stab wound of a joke he keeps trying to say. It’s hilarious, he says, you have to hear it. An Irishman walks into a bar

Percy laughs, and it’s hollow. The bags under his eyes are golden and worth more than he is.

Sometimes Chris thinks things shouldn’t be this way, the way funhouse mirrors aren’t really funny after a while. Stare long enough the distorted, deformed thing in there stares back, and the bad joke tastes a bit like iron on his tongue. It comes out of his mouth bright red and drips down his chin like it’s trying to escape.

If Percy’s smiles are golden and bright, if Alice’s eyes are hollow, like holes in her head illuminated by candlelight, like you could take a knife and make her smile or frown, if Chris tastes red with each word on his tongue then

then well, it’s a fine laugh, like a joke he heard once.

Chris licks the bright, candy apple red from his lips and it tastes sweet, sharp and cool. Alice presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth to make it feel better.

And it does.