Bogdan Dragos supervises casinos for a gambling company, working twelve-hour shifts locked in a dark office full of TV monitors. There he mostly daydreams and writes poems and stories. He also manages…
these days a lot of
people call
themselves
empaths
They claim to be able
to feel what
other people
are feeling
and suffer with them
"I cheated on my boyfriend
with his brother," some
girl said,
“and being the empath
that I am
I started crying along
with him when he
found out. It's hard
being such
an empath."
And there was
the guy
who got into a bar
brawl and
knocked another guy's
teeth out
and held a hand to his
own mouth and made
pain noises
I guess he
was an empath too
If you have a
social media account
and don't describe yourself
as an empath
people will think you're some
kind of monster,
a psychopath, they'll compare
you with Hitler
Yeah, it's a good
reason not
to use social media
If you actually
needed another
They had the poor girl lie
on the cold tile floor
and then they all pissed on her
and you could hear them tell her to open her
mouth wide and stick her tongue
out
It was one of the
poorest videos on the site
but the women watching it
recognized the girl
She went
to the same high school as them
back in the day
So
trashy porn is what she turned to
Not exceptionally unusual, but
one of the kids
running in the park before them was her child
Just eight or nine
"You know," said one of them. "Like it or not
it's just a matter
of time until our sons catch wind of
this and then..."
"Oh my..."
"Goodness!"
"The sins of the parents are visited upon
the children. It's not fair. Imagine
the life her poor kid's gonna
have."
"Yeah, our own kids might
very well be the bullies, we'll never know. Like I said,
it's a matter of time..."
"Well, goodness, what can we do
about it?"
"Flag the video?"
"You know it won't work..."
"Oh, I got an idea. What if... you know, what if
we all uploaded sexy vids of us. Um, not
necessarily as trashy as this one
but just pornographic enough. The boys
won't be able
to gang up and bully one if all their mothers
did it... Right? C'mon, let's do it
for that poor kid. Think about his future..."
The other mothers
looked at her
and they kept looking
mute
until one of them pulled out her
smartphone
Daydreaming as a profession 