I'll bet it was about 4:30 am in a Walmart

    I'll bet it was about 4:30 am in a Walmart where I'd gone to purchase a series of jackets when I started to noticed people popping and exploding around me. The soup cans in the canned soup aisle were covered in pink slime with a consistency between jello and cake frosting. Bits of grey matter had glommed to the shelving, still twitching with the vitality of baby octopi. Two aisles down, a fat woman's neck was eating itself. She panted and gurgled in pain as she bent over for a 40-pack of snot-colored sport drink.

---

    Frankie Bacon was my best friend but not for any length of time. I'd met him the Tuesday before in a park, where he was wringing the neck of every pigeon he could get his hands on. Then they went into the pile hidden behind a couple bushes but still sure to be discovered. Everything out of Frankie's mouth made me smile then laugh then cry, even his toxic breath. "Roger," he'd say, "do you think people will ever stop dying?"
    "What do you mean?" I'd say. "What people?"
    "All people. They just keep dying. Like all the fucking time. When will it stop?" Then I'd notice the tears leaking from his eyes.
    "I dunno. Once there are no more people, I guess."
    So he'd take a snort from the vial hanging around his neck, the one labelled 'Smelling Salts' with a sharpie, and grin: "That's right, isn't it!?"
    I was in love with Frankie for a lot of reasons, but chief among them was that despite looking like and being a bum, he always seemed  to have just enough cash to cover whatever we were doing. A crumpled twenty forgotten in his coat pocket or a thick roll of singles. Myself, I think I had a job or something, but whatever they paid me went quickly to bottles of everclear and hotdogs. I hadn't been to my apartment in long enough that I couldn't really prove that it was still there. But the idea of its continued existence was comforting.
    The other thing I loved about Frankie was that he was ugly as shit. He was short, fat, and wrinkly. He could've been the lovechild of John Belushi and a rat. His hair started halfway back his scalp and from there lived the life of a rowdy teenager; curling, poofing, starting up punk bands, and sometimes catching on fire. Just by standing there, he made me feel handsome and young.