![\"A](\"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/mariostar.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nI assure him of his welfare and take care not to minimize his experience. If I can\u2019t enter his world at his most vulnerable now, why would he want me in it when the monsters are really real?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I ask him what is it like when he\u2019s alone in bed, dead of night, \u201cWhat do you see?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beasts with sharp teeth?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A zillion eyes, squidgy tentacles, clacky claws, faces fallen off?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He gestures vaguely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe darkness stacks up.\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Archaic fear scales my spine damn <\/em>do you remember what that was like? Your eyeballs doing childish, ancient things, catching out predators, no matter it’s all false alarms, your imagination at its meanest\u2014piles of clothes into blackholes and subtle shifting shadow, slithering at the periphery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I fell sick on New Year\u2019s Eve, two weeks plus only now feeling better, though if my head changes cant I need to clamp the crown to hold in the pressure. Walking about with palms pressed to my skull, a perpetual state of disbelief. I got the shot but it was probably still the flu. Twelves boxes of tissues, soaked with neon gunk and blood. Coughs so long and deep I puked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s thrown a wrench in my 2026. I\u2019m the sort of person who reflects, more cynical these days than I like to admit, but still game for the annual ritual reset, a gullible goldfish. There shall be goals! Bullet points! Plans! This year\u2019s gonna be different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I learned of it first from my brother in St. Paul, vague texting the family thread about a punchy mayoral response. He later apologized for messaging without context, because ope, no, I hadn\u2019t heard. A woman had been murdered. I was at work, battling through the crud and brain fog, dutifully ignoring the world, the worst. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These fucking assholes. These absolute fucking actual monsters, reigned by a criminal rapist pedophile tyrant, fueled by lies, hate, greed, self-convinced invincibility, riding the high of a righteousness that reeks, a gloves-off god complex that kills on behalf of the United States government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2026. There\u2019s no quick, under the covers set-just-right from this never-ending coverup, this coup of the soul of the country I thought I grew up with (yup, still waking up, still the goldfish) but really, sure\u2014The Files<\/em>\u2014they\u2019ll redact deny attack blackbox fantasy island child rape as long as possible, but everything else? They\u2019re not even hiding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n L.A. Chicago. Minneapolis. I got no rightsiding this. Happy path through outrage and grief. Living in Texas is an abstraction, another dimension, \u201cmy Minneapolis\u201d another lifetime, those city streets I used to bike now filled with teargas and chants (again) of a citizenry that persists, resists, trauma after trauma after trauma. I am so damn proud of them, and so damn scared. I think of my family and friends in the Cities nonstop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Along with this other six-year-old son who doesn\u2019t have his mom to save him from these monsters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not a false alarm. When they tell you who they are, believe them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[15,17,28],"class_list":["post-9211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-narratives","tag-deepsicks","tag-family","tag-minneapolis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9211"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9245,"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9211\/revisions\/9245"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/megasimon.com\/d6\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u201cThat’s fine, dude, I\u2019m not mad at you,\u201d BAM BAM BAM!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
There will be gaols.
Bullet wounds.
Plans, oh yes, master ones.
Project Twenty Twenty-the-Rest-of-Our-Lives. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gaza. Venezuela. Greenland. <\/p>\n\n\n\nWhen they tell you who they are, believe them.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Believe what your eyes are showing you.
The darkness stacks up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"