That was jammed in Walt’s left eye, buried all the way up to the gold band where the cap fit snuggly against the marbled blue handle. The hilt? Do pens have hilts? Or just swords? This felt like a sword. A sword some demonic mouse-sized man, a master jouster, had run right through the soft jelly of his once-blue iris, the sharp metal nib pretty darn close to his brain. Of that he was sure. The pen was terribly close to his brain. His vision blurred. He couldn’t read the initials, the monogram that so pleased him when his boss awarded his Ten Years of Service. WSG. “Ha.” This time he actually said it. He couldn’t shut his mouth after and began to drool, but it was worth it. “Ha.” He choked. Second times were never worth it. What was best was first. He always loved what was first, best, top of the line. Patricia had been first. The pen: top of the line. He never went cheap. His younger brother once told him to quit fetishizing the real. Fetishizing the real? What the fuck did that mean? “It means quit loving your damn pen so much. And quit bragging about your car. We don’t care what you drive. What you drink. What you own.” I like stuff, he’d answered. My stuff. “Stuff isn’t what matters, dude. All this crap. It’s just a fetish. A mass illness. Like, imagine if everyone decided dominatrix boots—glossy leather seven-inch thigh highs—were it. Imagine everyone loves those. Has to have them. That would be dumb, right? And clown noses. Add clown noses. We’d all go around teetering on big black boots—guys, girls, little kids, the President, Mom, everybody—and wearing red noses. Would that be dumb?” Well, yeah, he’d said. “It’s all like that. Your car. Your refrigerator. Your computer. Your phone. Big black boots and red rubber noses. You long for it, you buy it. It’s a fetish, man.” His brother paused. “Quit it.” Now, Walt couldn’t move. His left arm wrenched behind his back. His right leg twisted like a corkscrew. His favorite mug (“Not Listening”) shattered
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