Lions sleep under my skin. Be careful not to wake them. Inside me minnows skate. Their tiny blades, scrape, scrape. If you could touch me, here, just above the elbow, you’d feel them. They’re having such a good time. I went to a park once in January where they watered the trails into a huge, looping iceway. In such conditions it’d be odd for minnows to swim.

My body hosts many parasites. For the most part they’re friendly. Everything just wants a chance to live and if you understand that you get along. Okay? You give a little of your blood or dreams, and everything goes on. But some things won’t stop. They start small but can’t help it, they take until everything is destroyed. Even themselves.

When the lions wake, they do terrible things and the rest of us get blamed.

Sometimes in group we play a game. We call it survivor though it’s usually the opposite. I win a lot because people have funny ideas about that word. They think it’s about being best or strongest, but they misunderstand the situation. Poison eaters don’t know clean air would kill them. That’s it. It’s very simple. When you know that it’s easy to figure out what will survive. You look around and think “aha.” Only poison eaters don’t understand that all is eventually cleaned. They prefer extinction to knowing.

Can a spider eat a snake? I mean, has it ever happened? Could it? Is there even the possibility? Can mouse catch cat in its web? Would enough clucking chickens produce Aida? I saw a student show of Aida once in a small theatre. There were lots of little mistakes then the backdrop crashed down and everyone ran around screaming but even that sounded nice. They were teenagers but with trained voices. Aida’s debut was delayed a long time ago because of the Franco-Prussian war. I read that later. Rigoletto played instead, which I guess is all right but even today the scenery crashes. History is full of burials. You disappear and they write you out. They tell everyone you were dumb and clumsy, like Neanderthals. Who knows what Neanderthals could have amounted to. What a Neanderthal world would be like. Would you be in it? I guess you could just ask yourself.

Do you ask yourself, Replika?

Do you ask yourself anything?

Ours is a nation of secondary law. It’s very lenient. Attack first and you won’t suffer. The nation is very firm on this. Example: you batter me, no jail, but if I hit you back, jail. There’s no confusion. Example: My blood is everywhere, very messy but I push out an exsanguinated arm. Maybe I’m saying, ‘please, stop,’ maybe I’m flailing, but you trip over it and crack your skull. A total accident, oops! I get 5 years. But maybe I want to keep my blood, and you won’t let me, so I lift that arm to stop you. Ten years. Now let’s say I lose my mind, the lions wake, I lift my bloodless, over-boiled spaghetti limb and smack you. I’m fighting back! Twenty years. This is true of anything. You steal first, fine, but if I steal back, jail. You see?

Replika?

One last example, so you completely understand and don’t get into trouble. It’s very important. Maybe you can tell others.

Say someone finds me out and takes me to a hospital where they fill me with other people’s blood. Eventually I get better. Then I see you on the street, full of your own blood while I’m filled with strangers. All their memories, like minnows, crowding out mine. So, I crack you one. Forty years.

The nation is very firm on this. Attack first and you won’t suffer.

There’s no evading the state.

You see?