All I see are sores. Long, pink, puffed-up sores oozing and dripping beneath brown, blood stained gauze. The classroom looks like a battlefield. Everyone wears a wound with pride, flaunting their masochist membership cards out in the open. Blood spills down their arms, chins, legs, chests. They’ve enlisted in my war and all I want them to do is get out.

It started with a video. Then the landmines started getting stepped on. Pain is better than porn. I can get off quicker if I picture with barbed wire wrapped around my dick instead of Jessica Alba in a thong. I’m sick - tell me something I don’t know.

This video, the one creating soldiers on an assembly line, was just something made to pass the time. In a town as small and dull as Aaron’s Lake, baking cookies and racing tractors is the only entertainment we have. Deron was in charge of the camera, I was in charge of the psycho shit. Lye, check. Water, check. A paintbrush and vinegar, check. The easiest way to make people leave you alone is to convince them that you need a shrink; it didn’t work that way for me.

“You’re fuckin’ crazy,” Deron said with his blond hair hanging like a curtain in front of his cobalt eyes. He turned the blinking red light on.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I told him. Then I picked up the wet paintbrush and started drawing on my leg. It’s funny to think that I come from a perfectly normal family.

I’m a god now. I have followers and worshippers. People want to know my secrets, the way my brain works. Girls who ignored me before are now shoving their pussies in my face as if I’m really going to fuck their brains out one day. Maybe I will, I don’t know. Deron says I won’t, that I better not if I still want him as a friend. What does he know? He’ll fuck anything with legs.

The room is empty now, the soldiers, with their soiled bandages and swollen limbs, are in the halls talking as if they’ve just discovered religion. Most of them have. They call it Harpee and I’m the accidental founder. I’m the king of this game and the power button is connected to my heart. If I turn it off, I’m gone; I won’t be coming back. Deron will come with me. He’ll die if I do. We’re that close.

It started with a video, and then Aaron’s Lake went crazy. I gave myself a chemical burn on camera and it ended up on Youtube. In a week it had 200,000 hits. Now everyone I know, and some that I don’t, either love me or want me to go to therapy. I’d take therapy over adoration any day. Talking to someone other than Deron, telling them how fucked up I really am. A therapist would puke at the shit I can think of.

The war cry bellows and another class starts. I’m supposed to be in English learning how to be Hitler to my Nazis, but I don’t want to go. I can lead them just as easily from Deron’s car. Anywhere is better than here, where everyone watches me, seeing what I’m going to do so they can be the exact same. Purple and black, our school colors. We’re all just walking bruises waiting to fade.