Crack the Spine - Issue 153

the artist. The animated sky formed a path of sunlight for the boy. He engulfed in the sunlight, not a shadow touching him.

“Where’s your fat mother?” the artist asked.

With a lick of that multicolored lollipop the boy coyly smiled and pointed, keeping an icy eye contact. Following a little sausage finger, a picturesque cottage rested on the pinnacle of a faraway hill. Smoke billowed out the chimney. Red door shrouded and obscured by rose bushes trapped by a small white fence. Two windows on the front, but an attic window a third eye.

“She’s making sandwiches,” the boy said, “Do you like sandwiches?”

Lankily and snake-like, the artist leaned over the boy, forcing the darkest shadow the clouds would never permit.

“I love sandwiches.”

The boy shrunk in the skeleton’s manifestation.

“Do you know why I love sandwiches?”

The boy shook his head, half out of fear, and snuck a lick on that oversized lollipop.

“God once told me, ‘Why don’t you eat a sandwich?’ I didn’t know what to say, but the way he said it, it was framed like the setup of a bad joke. So I say, ‘I don’t know, God. Why don’t you eat a sandwich?’ And then God buries God’s face into God’s hands and I think God is depressed. But the hands move and God’s face pops right back up, and sticking to the middle of God’s face is a red felt clown nose. And God goes, ‘Voila!’ And I don’t laugh. The studio audience of angels is quiet, and God says, ‘It’ll be one of those jokes you’ll get in the middle of the night.’ So here I am. Waiting.”