BLUE HAZE

I was depressed, fucked up, and heartbroken at the cannabis
dispensary. There was a muscular guy with long braided hair
behind the counter. He said to his coworker, who was crouched on
the floor restocking items from a box, “Yep, rain again, but wutcha
gonna do?” His coworker said, “What?” The muscular guy with
long braided hair repeated himself, but this time with intensity:
“WUTCHA GONNA DO?!” He sounded like an ex-wrestler who
now worked at a cannabis dispensary. He gave me a nod and put
my order on the counter. He said, “How you DOING
TONIGHT?!” He planted his palms on the counter and leaned
forward, almost like he was about to cut a promo under arena
lights. One of his elbows bumped a glass bong that had been sitting
beside the register. The sound was like a folding chair to the ear. I
gave him money, then went back into the rain.

 

IRISH CREAMER

I was trying to stir a coffee at Quick Chek but I couldn't focus.

A guy with a green mohawk and a guy with a red mohawk were

waiting for their food at the deli counter. The guy with the red

mohawk stared at his phone while the guy with the green

mohawk told him a heartfelt story about how his cancer-ridden

dog needed to be put down recently. The guy with the green

mohawk said, "Yeah, man, it was brutal. I couldn't pay for

another surgery. The way she looked at me was so intense and

sad. Fucked up. It's like she was saying goodbye or something.

It just sucks. She was, like, my daughter, you know? You should
have seen it. I don't know how to explain it. It was like

she was saying goodbye." The guy with the red mohawk looked

up from his phone and said, "That's pretty crazy," and looked

back down at his phone again.

 

MONDAY LOBOTOMY

I was sitting at my desk at my office job when my boss walked

into the center of the room and started explaining a specific way

to take a screenshot. He said no one in the office had been doing

it correctly. He said the correct way involved cropping out the

edges of the screen to make the screenshot look "less busy." As

he explained and over-explained and repeated himself for 20

minutes, he consistently referred to this process as "edging."

Whenever he said "edging," I had this reflexive reaction where

my eyes bulged out, and I'd quickly over-correct by squinting.

After his spiel, he asked if anyone had questions, and I heard

my mouth say, "Yeah, sorry, what was it called again? Edging?"

He said, "Yeah. Edging. That's what we call it here." His face

was serious. He said, "Edging is very important for maintaining

the quality of our work at this company." One of my eyeballs

shot out of my face and rolled under my desk. My boss studied

it for a few seconds and rubbed his chin and said, "Well, them's

the breaks."

 

SCRAMBLED EGG

BREAKFAST SANDWICH

In line at Quick Chek this morning, a woman tapped me on the

shoulder and said, "Hey, excuse me, sorry to bother you, but I

noticed you were looking at Facebook. Have you been seeing

all this stuff on there about what they did to Jim Carrey?" I said,

"What?" She said, "Jim Carrey. They replaced him with a

clone." She stuck her phone so close to my face that I had to

squint to adjust my eyes. I looked at the picture on her screen. It

was from an awards ceremony. It showed Jim Carrey looking

like Jim Carrey. The woman said, "That ain't Jim." I squinted

harder, absorbing as many details as possible, but it still just

looked like a picture of Jim Carrey at an awards ceremony. I

said, "Oh, yeah, I see what you mean." I went back to looking at

my phone. On my Facebook feed, there was a video of a baby

pig hatching from a chicken egg.

Brandon Diehl is the author of the poetry collection Adulthood (Anxiety Press, 2026). His poetry has appeared in Dream Boy Book Club, Apocalypse Confidential, Maudlin House, Pool Party, Scaffold, Cottonmouth Journal, Blood+Honey, The Daily Drunk, Horror Sleaze Trash, Ear Rat, The Literary Underground, and other places. You can find him at www.brandondiehl.net, which he never updates.