taking in the darkness by mental synthetic aperture radar, i come across miniature tribes sharing among themselves a symmetric drawing of a mobile home on a Cartesian plane. one of the tribe sits running her tattoo gun along the skin of a candle. she is seriously ******* up that tattoo gun. they decide to build this mobile home, but the construction irritates my roommate. she says they must build their mobile home outside, it’s more tragic that way anyhow. she is right, the trudging-through-mud-and-rain story is riveting, though further scanning on my part reveals that fate intends differently. once outside, the darkness has to move inside, adopt hosts and appease some master i assume. the chewing of massive rodents under the porch sinks into the skin behind their ears. The tribe people all get wax tattoos of warnings, skulls, demon spells, inverted stars. the darkness invades them and becomes the wick. as the mobile home nears completion, my roommate steps out with the garbage. a loosened tuna can careens into the tribe’s escape pod. before the rats even twitch, the wicks light, catch fire and burn them all to a psychotic crisp. look what you’ve done, i say to my roommate, they had hope for certain freedom. she says the rats eat guilt free tonight.